Geeking Out

Steve here. I'm an embedded systems software engineer, so I love to geek out over all this stuff!

What's an embedded system? It's a product that has a computer embedded inside, the electronics and software that make it work, like a microwave oven or smart TV. You don't think of those things as computers, you think of them as an oven or TV.

Electronics

The electronics in cameras, lenses, mounts, and drones are amazing. These are full-on embedded systems.

Cameras have autofocus, object and eye tracking, and image stabilization to help you get better shots. Even the lenses now have autofocus and image stabilization electronics built in, working with the camera. 

The mounts for cameras and telescopes have computerized control capability to go to specific locations in the sky and track them as the Earth revolves underneath.

There are even systems that will automatically take images of the night sky, identify the stars in them, and align the rig to that orientation, essentially robotic telescopes. The software inside them uses a method called "plate solving" that matches the pattern of stars in view to a database of stars. That's pretty mind-blowing!

Drones combine these things into airborne camera platforms with auto-flying features.

All of this is affordable to amateurs and hobbyists.

Image Processing

The image processing software for turning the raw camera images is just as amazing. Running on a regular home computer, the software brings out incredible detail that you didn't realize was there, especially for astrophotography.

The human eye is limited in what it can see. Objects in the sky are dim, and they emit light at wavelengths we don't see. But digital camera sensors can see them. They're extremely sensitive, collecting and accumulating light a few photons at a time.

Software takes that image data and allows you to adjust it in a variety of ways, from improving the color and contrast in a bird photo to making the invisible wavelengths of light visible to the human eye in an astrophotograph.

The other thing software can do is "stack" images. Classical astrophotography required taking long exposures of minutes or hours to accumulate enough light on the film or sensor in a single image.

But stacking takes a number of short exposure images and "stacks them up" to add up the light. It automatically matches up the pixels in the images and lines them up to combine them into a final image of spectacular quality. This changes the game completely.

It's quite insane the astrophotography images that are now within reach of amateurs.

Cost

Photography and astronomy equipment isn't cheap, but it doesn't have to be all that expensive, either. 

Optics are like boats: the more you spend, of course, the more you get. And the sky's the limit on how much you can spend! Remember that BOAT stands for Break Out Another Thousand. If you have $100 million to spend, I can point you to a nice super-yacht. For $100 thousand, you can get this awesome solar telescope.

Fortunately for those of us who live in the real world, an investment of one to two thousand dollars is enough to create a basic nature photography and astrophotography setup. That includes camera, lenses or telescope, tracking mount, and image processing computer.

Every BOAT you spend beyond that will ratchet things up a notch: higher image resolution, higher magnification, higher quality equipment with more capability. All toward the goal of higher image quality, higher image awesomeness!