Revised and updated August 2026.
My foray into the world of amateur astronomy is very sporadic. I might decide to do a bit of sky gazing when I notice that the night sky is particularly dark and so stay up for an hour instead of going to bed. Or if something interesting is due to occur I might attempt a bit of basic astrophotography. Where I live the sky is reasonably dark after midnight when the street lights have been turned off, so I quite enjoy laying back in a lounger and just looking up, trying find planets, stars and constellations. I like watching the sky during a meteor shower but have just about given up trying to get a decent photograph of one. This page contains some of those sporadic moments.
On this page:
Photographing comets, 1996 and 1987.
In 1996 I took some photos of comet Hyukatake and in 1997 I took some of comet Hale Bopp. Looking at what I wrote on back of those photos I can see that I used a Canon SLR with a 50mm f1.4 lens at exposures of 20 seconds using ISO 100 film. The few bright stars that were captured at the same time were nice little points of light.
I also tried photographing stars and constellations and found out that as soon as the exposure time was increased to capture the fainter stars, they ceased to be dots and became streaks. Using a wider angle lens to capture a larger section of sky was more successful as the stars were too small to see that they were really little streaks, but when using a longer lens with a smaller maximum aperture meant that the exposure had to be longer and that increased the streaking unacceptably. I would have liked to have photographed the stars properly but I just never got round to doing that until a lot later.
Photographing the total eclipse of the Sun, 1999.
On August 11th at around noon there was to be an eclipse of the Sun that would be a partial eclipse for most of the UK and a total eclipse at the extreme tip of Cornwall. I thought that I might try to get a photo of the partial eclipse from my home near Bath, about 165 miles away from the path of umbral shadow, but on the day the forecast was "cloudy" just about everywhere in southern England. Then at the last minute, I was offered a seat on a plane that had been specially chartered to fly along the coast of Cornwall and into the path of the umbral shadow.
I only had a short time to get to Bristol Airport and so I had to act fast. In my bag was a Canon F1n SLR loaded with Agfa CT200 slide film and my Canon prime lenses. I grabbed it and left for the airport. As the plane flew south I thought about the best way to attempt the shoot. I decided that my longest lens, a 200mm f2.8 would be my best choice. I fitted the lens, stopped it down to f32 and added a polarising filter, hoping that it would reduce the brightness a little. I decided to set the shutter speed at the maximum of 1/2000 sec and work down, taking as many shots as I could. I wondered if the heat from the sun would damage the film or the focusing screen, but I was prepared to take that chance. The screens on an F1n were changeable and so it would be easy, although expensive, to replace it.
It became obvious that I was going to need to point the lens high into the sky to see the sun through the small window of the Dash-7 aircraft. I removed the AE prism finder so that I could simply look down at the focusing screen rather than trying to look up through the viewfinder. I set the lens at infinity and as totality approached I watched the sun through my eclipse glasses. At just before the moment of totality I angled the camera upwards, found the thin curve of light that was the sun and started to shoot, advancing the film manually. I didn't have a motor drive at that time. It seemed only a few seconds before the sun started to appear again and almost instantly the screen was flooded with light. I lowered the camera and watched the rest of the eclipse. The focusing screen was warm but there seemed to be no damage. All I could do then was to send my film for processing and hope.
When my slide film was returned, I found that I had taken nine shots but only one was any good. I have no idea at what shutter speed it was taken at though. Just something less than 1/2000 sec. The slide film had also been slightly buckled by the heat of the sun but I was able to get a decent image from my slide scanner. I know that this was a bad thing to do to a camera but I got away with it.
1999 eclipse just after totality. Canon F1n with 200mm f2.8 lens and a bit of luck.
Photographing a partial solar eclipse, 2015.
D-I-Y Solar Filter
On 20th March there was to be an eclipse of at least an 80% coverage of the sun by the moon everywhere in the UK. I decided to prepare for this one. Glass solar filters suitable for photographing the sun are available but are expensive if you are only going to need one now and then, so I decided to make my own.
I bought a sheet of solar safety film and sandwiched a piece of it between two rings of strong cardboard so that it was reasonably crinkle-free. I taped the ring to a cardboard tube that I made that was just large enough to slip over the hood of my Nikon 300mm f4 lens. The strongest cardboard that I could find to make the rings with was from a wine box. I used strips of aluminium adhesive tape to secure the rings to the tube.
IMPORTANT: Looking directly at the sun especially through a lens will damage an eye irreparably so the right kind of foil must be used. I used Baader AstroSolar Safety Film.
Cloudy 2015 partial eclipse, nearly over. Nikon D300 with 300mm lens.
On the day of the eclipse there was a total cloud cover but I set up my camera with D-I-Y filter on a tripod anyway and waited. I watched until well past the point of maximum eclipse, but the cloud never lifted so I gave up.
Shortly after, I went to walk into the town but as I left the house I glanced up and unexpectedly saw the sun through the thinning clouds.
I rushed back into the house, grabbed my camera and removed the D-I-Y filter; the cloud cover was still total but slightly thinner so there was no danger of me getting an eye-full of sun now. I managed to take a few hand-held shots before the cloud cover thickened again. The eclipse was nearly over but locally, most people didn't even get to see that much.
This photo was only slightly cropped.
Photographing the Moon, 2018.
Meade ETC125 with a Fuji X-T3 attached to the photo port
I acquired a Meade ETC 125 astronomical telescope from my brother who was buying something more up to date. It has a Maksutov-Cassegrain optical design with a 125mm-diameter front lens. It can automatically track across the sky to counteract the rotation of the Earth to keep an object in view. The object is viewed through an eyepiece on the top of the telescope achieving from 48 times to 279 times magnification depending on the eyepiece chosen.
There is also a photo port at the back of the telescope where a camera body can be fitted directly using a camera to T mount adaptor. The magnification achieved is not as high as the eyepiece can achieve but using a full-frame 35mm camera, the telescope becomes the equivalent of a 2300mm f18 lens (about a 46x magnification). When using an APS-C camera the telescope can become the equivalent of a 3,450mm f18 lens (about 70x magnification).
The tracking mechanism of this telescope is fine for viewing by eye but it is not smooth enough to keep an object in the exact same place when taking long exposures with a camera. However, photographing the moon was not a problem as the moon is quite bright and so a fast shutter speed could be used.
This is a photo taken through the photo-port of the Meade using a Nikon D750 full frame film camera. Notice that the moon fits nicely in the frame. This gave me an idea. I had read that it was possible to take a photograph of moon with the International Space station (ISS) passing in front of it. So I decided to give that a try next.
I tried photographing the moon with the International Space station passing in front of it several times but the results were too poor to display here. So I then tried photographing the sun with the International Space station passing in front of it and did slightly better. I successfully shot a good moon transit in 2021.
Photographing a solar transit of the ISS, 2018.
To be able to view the sun, a telescope must be fitted with a solar safety filter to block out most of the light. This is to protect the eyes (and the camera). This filter causes the sun to appear much dimmer so it requires a bit of ISO/shutter-speed balancing to get a reasonable image at a high shutter speed. The ISS does not hang about. A transit could take less than one second.
I had tried several times to capture a solar transit but was unable to get anything better than a fuzzy butterfly shaped blob crossing the face of the sun. After several attempts at different ISO and shutter speed settings my best results were when shooting the transit on 22nd June 2018, shown below.
I found the exact date and time that the ISS would make a solar transit on the website transit-finder.com. Having the exact location that I was photographing from was essential to provide an accurate timing. The website was able auto-detect that location but I chose to use the latitude and longitude readings provided by my hand-held GPS device. As the transits are timed to hundredths of a second I also use the GPS device to time the start of the shoot.
Because the ISS is not visible in the daytime, I had to start shooting a few second before the stated start of the transit and stop shooting a few second after. This transit lasted for just 0.59 seconds. I used a Fujifilm X-Pro2 at 1/4000 sec, ISO 12800. I must have been shooting at 10 FPS because I got 5 shots of the ISS. The ISS is still a little fuzzy but the shape is unmistakeable. The high ISO that I used in order to get a fast shutter speed, might have contributed to the fuzziness as well as possible mechanical shutter vibration. Also I used a small extension tube on the Mead ETC125 camera port to increase the magnification. That may have contributed too.
To view the transit: click the arrow on the right of the picture.
The dark areas at the centre of the sun are sunspots.
Photographing the Milky Way, 2021.
This is a picture taken of the Milky Way from my garden in West Dorset. I used a sturdy tripod and a camera fitted with a wide-angle lens. It was a long exposure so the stars are very slightly elongated but as they are very small it hardly shows. Fujifilm X-T3 with 10-24mm f4 lens at 10mm. ISO 800, 30 seconds exposure. No post processing except to increase the brightness and contrast. However, although I mention elsewhere on this website that I prefer to keep post processing to a minimum, photographing distant stars, nebulae and galaxies does require more than a minimal amount of post processing in order to get the best out of what are very feint objects.
The Milky Way.
Photographing a Lunar transit of the ISS, 2021.
I made my first attempt at photographing a lunar transit in 2018 and several more after that, but I was not happy with the results. So here is my best attempt so far, taken in my back garden in West Dorset on a cool dry September night.
I used the website transit-finder.com to find the exact date and time that the ISS would make a lunar transit. I fed the latitude and longitude readings provided by my hand-held GPS device into the transit-finder to do this. As the transits are timed to hundredths of a second and can take less than a second I also use my GPS device to time the shooting.
The transit was to occur at 00:47 minutes and 57.07 seconds past midnight and was to last for just 0.97 of a second. I used a Fujifilm X-T3 (mirrorless camera) switched to its vibrationless electronic shutter. With this camera fitted, the Mead ETC125 telescope became the equivalent of a 3,450mm f18 lens. Because the lens mount to image sensor distance on a mirrorless camera is shorter than that of a full frame 35mm SLR, the moon was larger than the vertical field of view of the 'lens'.
With a lunar transit, when the sky is dark and the sun is not too far below the horizon, it will illuminate the ISS so it is possible watch it approaching and start shooting just as it gets to the moon. But for this transit, at a quarter to one in the morning, the ISS was in the shadow of the Earth so the approach was not visible. The only way to be sure to record the transit was to start shooting just before the stated time. I started shooting at 00:47 and 56 seconds and shot for five seconds. This gave me about 50 shots, 10 of which had the ISS in them. There was also some very thin cloud at the time. This can just be seen crossing the face of the moon in my shots.
To view the transit: click the arrow on the right of the picture.
Fujifilm X-T3 set at ISO-1600, 1/2000 sec, 10 fps.
Photographing the night sky using a tracker, 2022.
I then started to use a Sky-Watcher tracker when I wanted to photograph the night sky using a camera and a normal camera lens. A tracker allows longer exposures to be made without getting streaky stars and planets.
The tracker is attached to a sturdy tripod. The tracker has a motorised rotating plate to which a ball-and-socket head for holding the camera is attached. Once the axis of the tracker body has been accurately pointed at the celestial north pole, which is a point in the sky very close to Polaris, the axis of the battery powered rotating plate becomes parallel to the axis of the Earth. The plate turns in the opposite direction to the rotation of the Earth, allowing the camera to be aimed at any area of the sky, which, as far as the camera is concerned, will then appear to remain stationary.
This picture shows a Fujifilm X-E3 fitted to a Nikon 300mm f4 lens using a Nikon to Fujifilm adaptor. This is equivalent to a 450mm f4 lens. This sort of focal length is fine for photographing small areas of sky and relatively large objects such as nebulae and nearby galaxies.
Below is the first photo that I took using the tracker. It is of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, our nearest neighbouring galaxy, which is about 2.5 million light years away. It was a 90 seconds exposure taken at ISO 1000. The small galaxy above and behind Andromeda is M110. This image has not been cropped so it shows the actual field of view of the lens.
The Andromeda Galaxy. Single 90 seconds exposure.
To take really good photographs of the night sky it is preferable to take multiple images and manipulate them using a process called stacking, which uses software to produce one final image. The idea is that taking tens or even hundreds of short duration images will produce a higher quality image than one very long exposure and will not cause the over-exposure that a long duration image would have produced. A tracker is needed to keep the camera pointed at the object being photographed.
Below is my first attempt at using stacking software on multiple images taken using the tracker. I took ten 60-seconds exposures at ISO 1600 of the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, and put them through some stacking software to produce this single image. The galaxy is quite small in the frame but I didn't enlarge it as I wanted to show you the actual field of view of the 300mm (450mm equivalent) lens. Ten exposures isn't really enough to get a brilliant image but it's a start. M101 is 25 million light years away.
The Pinwheel Galaxy. 10 x 60-second exposures, stacked.
Photographing a partial eclipse of the Sun, 2026.
The August 12th eclipse was publicised well in advance but may people when it took place many people seemed to be unaware that they would not be able to see anything without a viewing aid of some sort. In the south west of England, where I live, between 94 and 96% of the sun was going to be covered by the moon and it seems that many thought that they would be able to see something when it got darker. But they didn't realize that it was not going to get dark, and even with 96% coverage the sun would still be far too bright to look at safely with the naked eye.
I dug out the home made solar filter that I made for the 2015 partial eclipse but didn't use due to clouds. I fitted my Fujifilm X-T5 to my largest tripod with the viewfinder at eye level and positioned it in my garden where I could get a clear view of the sun for the whole 2 hour event. I used my my old Nikon 300mm f4 lens, fitted to a Nikon to Fujifilm adaptor, fitted to a Fujinon 1.4x converter fitted to my Fujifim X-T5. Thus I had an equivalent 610mm f5.6 lens. I slid my D-I-Y filter over the unextended integral metal hood of the lens. This Nikon lens is fitted with an adjustable infinity stop so I focused on the sun then adjusted and locked the stop. There were a few light clouds appearing which I tried to ignore.
The clouds that I was ignoring earlier started to obscure the eclipse a few minutes before the point of maximum coverage and persisted for several minutes afterwards so I don't have a complete record of the event. But I was lucky to get the maximum coverage shot during a very short thinning of cloud. These images have been slightly cropped.
All images © Martyn Pearce