The art and science of
astrophotography has made great strides in recent years. Probably the
single most important reason for this has been the advent of the CCD.
CCD cameras allow astronomers, both professional and amateur, to image
fainter objects than ever before. Today, many amateur images reach
deeper and show more detail than images taken by the largest
observatory telescopes just a generation earlier.
The 2 CCD cameras shown above are among the most popular models available to amateur astronomers. The Santa Barbara Instruments Group (SBIG) ST series and the Apogee AP series provide high performance imaging at a reasonable price. As you'd expect from the leaders, their cameras work with most commercially available hardware and software. In addition, most of the deep sky images displayed in this report were captured using CCD cameras. |
