My first Astrophotograph
The wonders of the internet and robotics have enabled me to achieve a lifelong dream. Since I was a child, I have wanted to use a big telescope to look at and make images of the wonders of the universe. Last night, I used the Bradford Robotic Telescope, which is on a mountaintop in the Canary Islands, to capture an image of a galaxy which I processed this evening on my laptop. I am pleased with the results, especially for a first effort, though my head is spinning with new and half-understood knowledge of imaging and image processing and I suspect there is much more to learn and much better images to make.
Still, it is all rather awe-inspiring. I can sit in a rainy England in the afternoon and be amazed by the beauty of billions of stars, trillions of miles away, seen through a large telescope in excellent conditions.