There's never been an easier time to try your hand at photographing the heavens.

By Dennis di Cicco

IF YOU THINK THAT 47 YEARS of experience photographing the starry sky makes me a good candidate for introducing beginners to astrophotography, you're wrong. Digital photography has so revolutionised the way people take pictures, that my experiences as a teenager in the early 1960s conquering film-based astrophotography's formidable hurdles are now largely irrelevant. Indeed, even the typical challenges facing beginning digital astrophotographers a decade ago have fallen by the wayside. And trust me when I say all of that is good news.

By those earlier standards, today it's ridiculously easy to venture into the fascinating world of astronomical photography. Furthermore, you can do it with equipment that you probably already own. Yup, if you have just about any digital camera (and an estimated 100 million of them were purchased worldwide in 2008), you can at least try a little astrophotography without investing a cent.

Read the rest of this article in the May/June issue of Australian Sky & Telescope