Weltevreden SA
03-05-2016, 09:11 AM
Here's a note of encouragement to AP'ers in general and beginners in particular. Some people think that amateurs and their equipment are too elementary to make contributions to the science. Wrong. Here's a link to a paper just published <http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04222> that used a Canon camera body with 85mm and 200mm lenses to record very wide images of the Magellanic galaxies in the southern hemisphere. It's a heavy-duty technical paper so spare yourself the bewilderment by reading the Abstract and Section 2, especially the top portion of p. 3. Then look at the results in Figs 1 & 2 on p.5.
The text is a bit skimpy on just how the images were calculated, taken, and processed. But the point here is that the kind of equipment we can afford does indeed have a place in contributing valuable science. It's a long stretch between this forum and the pages of a professional paper, but if we pay a bit of attention to what the professionals are doing, there are holes in their range of equipment that our off-the-shelf SLRs can fill. In the case of the above paper, it was very wide field views taken to reach the 14th stellar magnitude. The scientists were not after the star images but rather subtly glowing gas and thin bands of dark obscuration called Galactic cirrus. Only a fast lens with a very wide field could capture them. Exactly the kind of camera we use to take pics of the kids splashing around in the pool.
The text is a bit skimpy on just how the images were calculated, taken, and processed. But the point here is that the kind of equipment we can afford does indeed have a place in contributing valuable science. It's a long stretch between this forum and the pages of a professional paper, but if we pay a bit of attention to what the professionals are doing, there are holes in their range of equipment that our off-the-shelf SLRs can fill. In the case of the above paper, it was very wide field views taken to reach the 14th stellar magnitude. The scientists were not after the star images but rather subtly glowing gas and thin bands of dark obscuration called Galactic cirrus. Only a fast lens with a very wide field could capture them. Exactly the kind of camera we use to take pics of the kids splashing around in the pool.