In any case - there's another really cool astrophotography related site I came across called "Pointing to the Universe". It contains the astrophotography of Fabian Neyer and you can navigate over to his site here: http://www.starpointing.com/index.html. Fabian does most of his work out of the 'Antares Observatory' located way over in the in the north-eastern part of Switzerland. Kinda cool that it's a cooperative facility owned by roughly 100 members of the Antares Astronomical Society'.
There's two different photo galleries - one composed of shots taken with a Canon digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera and another one of shots taken with a high end purpose-built chilled CCD astro-camera. For the most part, the DSLR shots are done thru short focal length camera lenses -- anywhere from a typical wide angle to a typical 135mm telephoto -- so the angular field of view is quite wide (ie, less magnification.) The CCD astro camera was used with a 4" diameter refractor of around 640mm focal length so it was good for objects requiring more magnification.
My favorite photo is found in the CCD section and it's a set of some of the most common deep space objects of all time - collectively known as the 'Nebulas in Orion'. Although a common target for amateur astrophotographers, you've likely never seen it this way. It's a four frame mosaic with a total of 61 hours of exposure time! Amazing detail and depth! I've included a small version of it below but to really appreciate it, make certain you go to the actual image page and click on the higher resolution (3290x2220 pixel) version located here: http://www.starpointing.com/ccd/orion.html -- WOW!
The CCD image gallery represents a lot of very hard work, years of learning how to take and process images and tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear. On the other hand, the DSLR gallery shows quite a bit more variety of images and investment. Although the images in Fabian's DSLR gallery represent some of the finest DSLR images around, they are also within the reach of the average amateur astronomer - albeit, not quite at the same level of perfection without comparable experience. A DSLR camera, lens and simple tracking mount can be had for under a thousand dollars and can form a tool-set for years of photographing the heavens. Give it a try!
So look at the site and enjoy the beauty of God's creative heavens!
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