Topic: Beginners in Astrophotography 3 Kai Westhöfer

It's great that you're joining our little beginner series, Kai. How did you get into astrophotography?

Hello Rudi, hello Karl. Thank you so much for letting me be part of this introduction. I only discovered astronomy (visual and photographic) for myself in July 2018. My wife wanted a telescope at the time, and I fulfilled her wish for her birthday. It was a 130mm reflector telescope. Once we figured out how to use an equatorial mount, we quickly went on our first explorations. Almost immediately, we started holding our smartphones up to the eyepiece and taking some beautiful pictures of the moon.

But it became clear to me relatively quickly that I wanted more. So, in March 2019, I bought a real gem: a 102mm refractor telescope (AC) on a Bresser Mon-2 mount with tracking motors, all about 15 years old. The seller gave me a comprehensive introduction to its use and casually mentioned, "Oh, you can also take some photos with a Canon adapter like this." I quickly bought the adapter and mounted my existing old EOS 10D onto the refractor telescope. On my first evening with the telescope, I immediately found the Orion Nebula and was blown away.

But it quickly became clear to me that you can't really take photos with an AC refractor telescope at f/10. So, in August 2019, I bought a Skywatcher Explorer 150 PS. With this, I was finally able to take my first pictures of Andromeda and the Pleiades. Unfortunately, the mount limited me to 20-second exposures. I then considered whether to upgrade the Mon-2 to GoTo, install an ST4 port myself, or buy a completely new mount. Luckily, I had saved up some money and was able to buy a Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro. In parallel, I gradually acquired accessories such as a guiding camera, a UHC filter, and a used, astro-modified Canon EOS 600Da. By November 2019, I had everything together and could begin experimenting.

With the active support of the Facebook groups, I was able to capture my first real deep-sky image of the Flaming Star Nebula in December. Now I'm just waiting for better weather to take more photos and practice my image processing (I'm starting from scratch, unfortunately!). I'm always impressed by how friendly and helpful the astronomy community is, and how warmly my first 30-second single exposure of Orion was celebrated, even though the groups are used to seeing much better results.

Here are some of the photos Kai Westhöfer has taken so far:

https://www.astrobin.com/users/KaiW88/…