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The Past
I have been an amateur astronomer since 1950, and
astrophotography has undergone a revolution since the 1950’s and
1960’s when I grew up. In those days, most photography and all
astrophotography was with black and white film. Color
astrophotography did not exist.
One of my astrophotography heroes was Dr. Clarence Custer whose
superb black & white images graced many a page and centerfold in
Sky & Telescope. One of his all time best images is the montage
of the Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31) published as a centerfold in
Sky & Telescope in May 1958 (Custer, 1958):
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Scanning and reproduction of Dr. Custer’s image in this essay
can not do the original publication justice1. He used
the prime focus of a homemade 12 ½ -inch Newtonian telescope to
compose this montage, which consists of three 90-minute
exposures on Eastman 103a-o plates. Extensive darkroom
manipulation was performed to hide the montage lines. Walter
Baade estimated the limiting magnitude of this set of images as
17.5. Modern CCD cameras and commercial telescopes available to
the amateur astronomer can easily exceed this magnitude limit
with very short exposures (Hunter, 2004): |
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