About the Astrophotographer

Welcome, I'm D34thM0u53, an astrophotographer from Brisbane, Australia,

My Journey

What started as a casual curiosity about space, evolved into a vast time and money sink.

Each image represents hours of planning, precise tracking, post-processing, and re-imaging to reveal the hidden details of nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters.

Equipment & Techniques

While astrophotography does not require specialized equipment [ Proof | More ], it certainly does become easier with gear designed for the hobby. Along with techniques I've learned over the last few years, here's some of what makes these images possible:

The Process

Each image is the result of multiple hours of exposure time, often spread across several nights. The process includes, but is not limited to:

Planning: Using software (typically Stellarium) to determine the best imaging targets for a given night and location. The target of choice for a night may be impacted by any combination of: the phase of the moon, weather, horizon (damn you trees!), and the apparent position of the target due to the season.

Capture: Long exposure imaging sessions, typically aiming for 6-12 hours per target, with each frame typically being 120-500 seconds in duration.
The camera and telescope are mounted on a tracking mount to move and keep the stars perfectly aligned within the frame.

Processing: 'Dark Frames' and 'Flat Frames' are used to calibrate out artifacts caused by the camera and telescope. Followed by the stacking of the best of the images, colour calibration and dynamic range enhancement to reveal the colors and structures hidden in the dark of night.

Capture Again: It doesn't matter how hard you plan, things go wrong and sometimes you don't find out until you load up the images the next day, that you need to start again.

This Gallery

This gallery is designed with a simple idea: Each visitor sees each image only once. Like looking through a telescope eyepiece, each viewing is a unique moment of discovery.

There is no going back.