Mike Lynch uses a telescopic camera system to capture more light, and therefor more detail, when gazing at the heavens. While astrophotography equipment can be expensive, a regular digital camera with manual shutter and lens settings can be used to get results that are better than what can be seen by the naked eye.

Up until about three years ago, I was strictly a visual amateur astronomer.

I've used my God-given eyes to gather the light from our wonderful universe to see what's available in our night skies.

Most of the time, I used just my unaided eyes, with the help of eyeglasses after age 9, but I've also spent oodles of hours gathering the light of the universe with binoculars and all types and sizes of telescopes to gaze at the celestial treats above.

I've seen some wonderful things with and without binoculars and telescopes, and I highly recommend my course of stargazing to anyone.

However, there are real limitations in visual astronomy, no matter how large your telescope is, and the optics of the scope have nothing to do with it. It's our eyes that limit us.

Now, I'm not knocking the job the good Lord did creating our eyes. They are extremely efficient at gathering light from whatever they're directed at, but they can only gather and accumulate so much light at once before the image is passed on to the memory files in your brain.

That's a good thing because if your eyes accumulated light like a camera with its lens opened indefinitely, your brain would soon be overwhelmed with overexposed images. Can you imagine driving if your eyes behaved like that? And you thought texting while driving was bad. This would be suicidal chaos!

As well as you can see celestial goodies through any size of telescope, a camera in place of your eye with its lens opened up for just a few seconds will "see" a lot more color and detail.

One of the biggest disappointments people have when they buy a telescope and look through it is they don't see the same detail and color seen in astronomical photographs.

Again, it's not your telescope, it's your eye's inability to accumulate light the same way a camera does.

The light of anything we can see is made up of individual photons. Photons are really funny things because they behave like waves as well as individual particles. If you want that explained to you, I suggest you consult a high school or college physics book. I could fill up the next three entire issues of the Butler Eagle trying to explain this and still leave you and me baffled.At any rate, the more photons you can accumulate of whatever you're looking at through a telescope, the better.A camera or imaging device hooked up to a telescope instead of an eyepiece can do the trick here, and as I said before, even an exposure of a few seconds can show you a lot more detail and color. If you can acquire an exposure of more than a minute, it can really blow your mind. That's extremely tricky to do properly, though, because of the Earth's rotation.No astronomical target stays still in the sky, so unless your telescope can keep up with your target in a precise manner, you're going to see smudgy streaks instead of stars.This is the most difficult aspect in astronomical photography, and I can tell you that first-hand. I'm getting better at it, but I have a long way to go.As you can see in the photograph, the photographic telescope-camera system I have is pretty complicated, but with a lot of hard work and practice, you, too, can get some really cool pictures like the one I have here of the Orion Nebula.Astronomical photography is still a real challenge, but it has become a little easier because of digital photography, computers and computer software becoming more and more accessible.Before digital photography, astrophotography was extremely difficult and time consuming because you had to wait for your film to be developed, whereas with digital, you can see the results right away and make immediate corrections and refinements.Computer software makes shooting and processing so much easier than it was. In just the next few years, technology will improve more and more, and I can see the day when most telescopes will have easy-to-use photographic capabilities.In the meantime, if you want to get into serious astrophotography, be prepared to make fairly sizable investments of time and money.When I was on a stargazing trip to Arizona three years ago, I heard about an astronomy outlet in Tucson called Starizona. Dean Koenig, the owner of Starizona, developed a special adaptive lens they call Hyperstar.In my opinion, this is a tremendous advancement. The faster you can "suck in" light to your telescope and astronomical camera, the better, and the Hyperstar is supersonic in its ability to gather the photons.If you're really serious about astrophotography, my strong advice is to contact Starizona through its Web site and find out more about the Hyperstar lens. It has helped me and many other people nationwide. The site is http://starizona.com.Now, if you're not ready to shell out a whole bunch of money or time, there's still a way to realize the power of astrophotography.Ideally, a digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera works the best, but just about any digital camera you can set on manual mode and that can keep the shutter open for even 15 to 30 seconds should do the job as well. You'll be surprised at how much more you can see of the night sky, especially if you take your shots away from heavy city lights.You also will need a camera that has a self-timer delay or a cable release to open the shutter, otherwise vibration can spoil your efforts. Setting up your camera with a tripod is your best bet, but you also can use your imagination and ingenuity to prop it up to aim in the right direction of the night sky you want to shoot.Try exposure times from 5 to 30 seconds with the lens open as wide as you can get it (if you have control of that). See how long of an exposure time you can get away with to see more detail, but if the shutter is open too long, your stars will be streaked because of their general westward drift in response to Earth's rotation.Try to use high-quality ISO image files, such as ISO 800, 1600 or 3200.Experiment with different settings and see which turns out the best. If you have the ability to

manually focus, aim your camera at the brightest star available. Looking though either the aiming viewfinder or the LCD screen, try to resolve the star to the sharpest dot you can.Give at least basic astrophotography like this a try and see how you like it. I have to warn you from experience that you can really get hooked on it. Also remember patience, patience and more patience, and don't take it so seriously that you get strung out when things don't go well. When that happens to me, my wife Kathy gives me the same advice I'll give you: Lighten up and try again!There are many books and resources to help you learn more about astronomical photography. Again, check out the Starizona Web site I mentioned. Another good resource is a CD-ROM by world-famous astrophotographer Jerry Lodriguss, titled "A Guide to Astrophotography with Digital SLR Cameras." You can find it on Amazon.com.Capture those Photons!Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.

Mike Lynch took this time-exposure photograph of the Orion Nebula using his telescopic camera system. The hardest part of astrophotography is being able to account for the rotation of the earth to capture clear images.

Running Man Nebula