User:Brainandforce

Hi, I'm Brandon, a graduate student in chemistry, amateur astronomer, and hobby juggler.

Astrophotography

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (in infrared, red, and green, mapped to RGB).
Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (in infrared, red, and green, mapped to RGB).

My main instrument is an Apertura CarbonStar RC8, (8" Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, f/8, 1624 mm focal length), coupled with a Touptek ATR533M (Sony IMX533 sensor, monochrome, cooled). This gives a field size of approximately 23'×23', smaller than a full moon in the sky. I have a filter wheel with LRGBSHO filters and an infrared pass filter.

I also have a few other optical tubes, including an Orion MC90 (90 mm f/5.6 Maksutov–Cassegrain, 500 mm focal length) and an Askar 52 mm Super ED guidescope.

I normally shoot from a Bortle 7 sky, but Bortle 4 and lower skies are available not far from me. In Bortle 7 skies, I prefer to get narrowband (SHO) and infrared data; RGB data is something I prioritize at darker skies.

Targets of interest

One of my goals as an astrophotographer is to provide high-quality astrophotographs to the Wikimedia project, especially for poorly known and neglected objects. Despite the limited field size I generally work with, I am interested in capturing close-ups of larger objects, as well as stitching mosaics.

I am also interested in acquiring near infrared imagery, especially using an IRG palette (mapping near infrared, red, and green light to red, green, and blue color channels).

I am located at 43° north, so acquiring good data for targets below about –30° of declination will be very difficult or impossible.