Astrophotography, Photo shooting the stars

The term Astrophotography is completely new to me. Yeah, I know Astro, cos my home does subscribe to it too but Astrophotography have not nothing to do with that Astro in TV.
Astrophotography simply means Astronomical Photography. Meaning that we shoot our camera towards the sky for those stars, moon and planets in the space. Cool huh!

If you just point your camera to the sky at night and snap a photo, you certainly going to get nothing other that a whole black image or maybe some blurry unrecognizable image. Yeah, it is hard to capture photo in the dark especially if you are not using those expensive DSLR camera and proper gear installed.

Using a normal pocket size compact camera would not do the job because you cannot do manual setting and it has a very short shutter speed. My wife's Sony DSC-W55 for example, has only 1 second shutter speed when set to take photo in the dark. I guess that wouldn't do much.
You will need a camera which allow you to do manual setting similar to a DSLR camera. There are many non DSLR camera which has manual setting.

Well, I don't own a DSLR camera, but I would like to try shooting some moon and star photo with my digital camera too. The only gear I have for my first Astrophotography attempt is my Canon S3IS and a cheap tripod (duno wat brand la). The Canon S3IS is capable to operate on manual setting where I can set it's Shutter Speed and Aperture (though I still doesn't really know whats this aperture thing does). The only limit is that the slowest shutter speed I could goes is only 15 seconds. Should be something sufficient to start off.

Well, the very first thing that really bugs me is the timing. Yeah, there's star in the sky every night but that doesn't mean that they could be visible clearly. Sometimes there are clouds or haze or the bright moon in the sky scared away all the star run into hiding. It would be days after days of wait before the right moment comes.

Then the next thing would be the place. It's easy to just walk out to my porch and start shooting the sky but there's a bright lamp post right in front of my house. The ideal place for astrophotography would be somewhere dark. Dark in the sky and dark on the ground as well. Unless I have some friends going along, I guess I would just start off from my house's porch instead. Anyway, I should be starting from somewhere isn't?

Photo Shot with Canon S3IS mounted on a cheap tripod ;p
Shutter Speed 15 secs
ISO 800
F3.5
Image Stabilizer OFF
5 secs self timer
No Zoom

The best object to shoot in the sky certainly is the Constellation of Orion. Ya know, the rectangular frame with three stars in diagonal direction in it. You could see it in the sky almost in every night.

Well, it kinda amaze me that the camera actually manage to capture more star than what I could see with my naked eyes.

Later in the morning, thin clouds start surrounding the sky. It was 6.30am in the morning and the sky started to turn bright. Anyway, the photo still giving me some excitement for more.

I tried to zoom in a little but the result turn out to be blurry. I'm not sure why, perhaps some setting which I tends to missed out. I hope someone out there could enlighten me how I could shoot the star with zoom. Still in my learning curve here.

This moon photo is taken sometimes back. Looking at the surface of the moon in the photo mesmerizes me. What does it like being there?

Read Also
Bird Photography at Kinta Bird Sanctuary Batu Gajah
Luckily I can renew Road Tax online
How to win in Gambling
Implementing Open Source Web Application
Arcade games of the past