Photon Recon: Capturing What's Out There Paperback – January 26, 2025

This work displays the best of the photos that I have taken three years into the amateur astronomy hobby. It contains a ton of nebula photos, a decent number of galaxy photos, star clusters, beautiful star fields, a couple comets, and a few photos of the moon.The main goal is to showcase all of the photos in one text for others to enjoy without having to get online. Secondarily, this book is meant to show what an amateur astrophotographer can accomplish from his backyard.Three years of learning is just scratching the surface of what can be accomplished. It does provide enough insight to get an idea for what area of this hobby one might want to dig deeper into, as deep space is a much different process compared to planetary photography. I realize that there are much better works out there, but it is exciting for me to be able to say that every one of the photos in this book is the result of my work. The entire process from setup, to taking sub-exposures, to processing can be tedious and frustrating at times, but being able to step back, look at the result, and say that you did it, is a great feeling. Granted, I didn't design this beautiful universe, I'm just taking photos of it.P.S. Most of the photos include a bit of my equipment detail, the target name, catalog number, constellation, size, and next opposition date for 2025. The last chapter contains an outline of my post-processing steps for one-shot color and narrow-band images. Read more