In September, Wycombe Astronomical Society was approached by Emily, a Year 11 student at Waddesdon C of E Secondary School, embarking on a self-led astrophotography project for her Photography GCSE; she hoped to take images of the Moon, planets or galaxies, perhaps using her camera and the Society’s scope.
The Society responded by lending her some of WAS’s loan equipment (our Celestron SLT 102 refractor and ZWO ASI 120MC-S Colour Camera). She received a Sunday morning crash course from Sandy Giles in setting up the equipment and downloading software for the camera and image processing.
“I gave Emily a brief demonstration on how to take the videos” Sandy said. “Fortunately the Moon was a morning object that day and it was clear! After that I ran through using AutoStakkert and Registax to stack the best frames and sharpen the resultant images. And then I kind of left her to it!”
And a few weeks later Emily sent the results of her efforts – as you can see she was very successful!
“When I first got the equipment and software” Emily explained, “it was slightly confusing but Sandy very quickly helped me understand what to do and how to do it. I kept the equipment for a few weeks and took a lot of photos. I then spent a few days editing all of them and adding them into my project for my GCSE. It has massively helped my project and I enjoyed every part of taking and editing the photos and then showing the results.”
“Frankly I was astonished – Emily has done amazingly well!” Sandy commented. “She has grabbed this thing by the neck and made the GoTo telescope to do what she demanded – and then she got on top of three very technical bits of software after only minimal training. I know there are members of WAS who are also interested in starting astrophotography – surely what Emily has achieved is a shining example of what can be accomplished, and provides ample encouragement for others to get started too”.
