Hi! I’m Jimmy Stewart
Astrophotography is the science/art of photographing objects far beyond the reach of your ordinary camera, using a telescope and camera combination. Although a regular 35 mm camera can be used most astrophotographers elect to employ a special CCD (Charge Coupled Device) Camera. The science part of the photography is collecting the data and the art part is processing that data into a beautiful picture. It may take two or three hours to image an object, then two or three days of work (or even more) to process that data into a suitable image.
Some astrophotographers concentrate their imaging on the Moon or objects that are not that far away, such as planets in our solar system. I prefer imaging deep space objects such as nebulae or star clusters in our Milky Way, which are thousands of light years away. I especially enjoy photographing other galaxies, with distances of millions of light years. It blows my mind that the light that is being captured by my camera chip left that galaxy millions of light years ago.
I began this hobby almost twenty years ago, after spending a night on Kitt Peak with world renowned astrophotographer Adam Block. I had taken a beginning astronomy class at the University of Arizona forty years ago while finishing my Atmospheric Physics degree. I was fascinated with the vastness of our universe. After the all night session of astro imaging with Adam, I was hooked. I had been flying private airplanes for years and I think my wife was hoping I would find a cheaper hobby. Now, thousands of dollars later, she is probably wishing I would go back to flying.
Around 2003 we built an observatory/gym onto our home. The gym part was what I call the WAF (Wife Approval Factor). The room had a rolloff roof that would open with the press of a button. My telescope was on an electric pier that would lift the scope up to roof height. The telescope was perfectly drift aligned so that the hour long process of alignment was not required each night that I wanted to image. We sold that home in 2013 and moved out to Tanque Verde, where I am now imaging once again from my backyard. I am back to aligning, but that process has been made much easier over the years. And since we have no street lights or cars, the skies are much darker.
We also now have automation systems that were nonexistent twenty years ago. I can decide what objects I want to image, put those targets into a computer program, and the whole imaging process will be performed while I sleep.
Most images on this website were taken in my backyard in Tucson, Arizona. The majority of the photographs are made up of between 50 to 100 unguided color images (stacked), each 15 to 30 seconds in duration. A few were made up of fewer LRGB images (stacked), but 10 to 20 minute guided exposures.
Thank you for coming to StewartSky.com. I hope you enjoy my pretty pictures!