New member interested in photometry and scientific astrophotography

Photometry Beginner Introductions Citizen Science
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Have you ever done photometry with your setup?
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Steven Ayres avatar
Steven Ayres avatar

Hey everyone,

Just joined AstroBin and figured I would introduce myself.

I am fairly new to all of this and have been spending most of my time learning the technical side of telescope control, imaging workflows, calibration frames, and photometry. I have not really focused much on traditional astrophotography yet since I have been more interested in the science and data side of things.

Current setup is an HEQ5 with an 80ED and a mono camera with a Johnson V filter. Right now I am mostly working on getting everything consistent and repeatable and learning as much as I can along the way.

Curious how many people here are into photometry or other science focused observing compared to imaging for visual results.

Looking forward to learning from everyone here.

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Interactive Sky avatar
Interactive Sky avatar

Steven Ayres · May 11, 2026, 10:09 PM

Hey everyone,

Just joined AstroBin and figured I would introduce myself.

I am fairly new to all of this and have been spending most of my time learning the technical side of telescope control, imaging workflows, calibration frames, and photometry. I have not really focused much on traditional astrophotography yet since I have been more interested in the science and data side of things.

Current setup is an HEQ5 with an 80ED and a mono camera with a Johnson V filter. Right now I am mostly working on getting everything consistent and repeatable and learning as much as I can along the way.

Curious how many people here are into photometry or other science focused observing compared to imaging for visual results.

Looking forward to learning from everyone here.

Welcome to the AstroBin community!

I have never done photometry or any kind of serious scientific research myself, but I am a PN hunter. I spend time checking different sky surveys and trying to find new nebulae, so I guess that could count as some kind of scientific contribution.

I think it is really interesting to see more people getting into the scientific side of astronomy and not only imaging for visual results.

Anyways, welcome to AstroBin, and Clear Skies!

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Steven Ayres avatar
Steven Ayres avatar

Interactive Sky · May 11, 2026, 10:45 PM

Steven Ayres · May 11, 2026, 10:09 PM

Hey everyone,

Just joined AstroBin and figured I would introduce myself.

I am fairly new to all of this and have been spending most of my time learning the technical side of telescope control, imaging workflows, calibration frames, and photometry. I have not really focused much on traditional astrophotography yet since I have been more interested in the science and data side of things.

Current setup is an HEQ5 with an 80ED and a mono camera with a Johnson V filter. Right now I am mostly working on getting everything consistent and repeatable and learning as much as I can along the way.

Curious how many people here are into photometry or other science focused observing compared to imaging for visual results.

Looking forward to learning from everyone here.

Welcome to the AstroBin community!

I have never done photometry or any kind of serious scientific research myself, but I am a PN hunter. I spend time checking different sky surveys and trying to find new nebulae, so I guess that could count as some kind of scientific contribution.

I think it is really interesting to see more people getting into the scientific side of astronomy and not only imaging for visual results.

Anyways, welcome to AstroBin, and Clear Skies!

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Honestly, I would absolutely count that as a scientific contribution. Finding and identifying things that might otherwise go unnoticed is a huge part of astronomy. That is actually one of the things I find really exciting about this hobby in general. Even individuals with modest equipment or enough patience can still contribute meaningful data or discoveries.

PN hunting sounds really interesting honestly. I have spent most of my time on the technical and data side so far, but I would like to branch out more as I learn.

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Craig Towell avatar
Craig Towell avatar

I’ve done a bit of exoplanet transit detection, it was very satisfying and I’d love to do more but I had software issues and just couldn’t get AstraimageJ to work consistently, so I gave it up really. I’m not very good with the software/computer side of things unfortunately!

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Interactive Sky avatar
Interactive Sky avatar

Craig Towell · May 12, 2026, 06:02 AM

I’ve done a bit of exoplanet transit detection, it was very satisfying and I’d love to do more but I had software issues and just couldn’t get AstraimageJ to work consistently, so I gave it up really. I’m not very good with the software/computer side of things unfortunately!

Hello, Craig!

I also tried exoplanet transit detection at some point and found Siril to be useful for this.

If you would like to collaborate, I would love to help with the software/computer side of it.

Clear Skies!

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Steven Ayres avatar
Steven Ayres avatar

Craig Towell · May 12, 2026, 06:02 AM

I’ve done a bit of exoplanet transit detection, it was very satisfying and I’d love to do more but I had software issues and just couldn’t get AstraimageJ to work consistently, so I gave it up really. I’m not very good with the software/computer side of things unfortunately!

Honestly, I think that is probably one of the biggest barriers keeping more people from getting into the scientific side of astronomy. The actual observation side can be really rewarding, but the software side can become frustrating fast when things refuse to cooperate.

That is actually one of the things that started pushing me deeper into this side of astronomy in the first place. There seems to be a pretty big gap between people interested in contributing data and software that feels approachable and reliable enough to keep them going.

Really cool that you were able to successfully detect exoplanet transits though. That had to feel incredible the first time it worked.

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Steven Fanutti avatar
Steven Fanutti avatar

I’ve done some very basic spectroscopy and converted some of my photos to star charts and lunar maps. I posted many of my charts on this site. I used to do visual variable star observing and I used that experience to create a few variable star charts also posted on this site. Last year, I timestamped my solar photos to time how long it took for a major sunspot to traverse from limb to limb. Currently, I am not very active in taking astrophotos, rather I am studying my past work to see what science I can learn from them and optimizing photos as I learn new processing skills. Currently, I am focusing on the mathematical side of astronomy / astrophotography. I have developed my own methods of predicting planetary alignments and calculating distances combining my photographic observations with mathematics. I am somewhat of an outlier on AstroBin as I mostly used normal camera lenses and an old DSLR for my work with occasional basic telescope shooting. A lot of science can be done with equipment more towards the minimal side.

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Steven Ayres avatar
Steven Ayres avatar

Steven Fanutti · May 21, 2026, 11:05 PM

I’ve done some very basic spectroscopy and converted some of my photos to star charts and lunar maps. I posted many of my charts on this site. I used to do visual variable star observing and I used that experience to create a few variable star charts also posted on this site. Last year, I timestamped my solar photos to time how long it took for a major sunspot to traverse from limb to limb. Currently, I am not very active in taking astrophotos, rather I am studying my past work to see what science I can learn from them and optimizing photos as I learn new processing skills. Currently, I am focusing on the mathematical side of astronomy / astrophotography. I have developed my own methods of predicting planetary alignments and calculating distances combining my photographic observations with mathematics. I am somewhat of an outlier on AstroBin as I mostly used normal camera lenses and an old DSLR for my work with occasional basic telescope shooting. A lot of science can be done with equipment more towards the minimal side.

I honestly think that is one of the coolest things about astronomy in general. A lot of people assume meaningful science requires massive observatories or extremely expensive equipment, but there is still so much that can be learned from careful observation, patience, and understanding the data you already have.

The part about going back through older work to see what scientific value can be pulled from is especially interesting to me. I feel like a lot of people probably have more useful data sitting on hard drives than they realize.

Also, your work with variable stars and planetary alignment calculations is very intriguing. You definitely sound like someone approaching astronomy from a very analytical perspective, which I find really appealing myself.

I’m definitely going to have to check out some of your work!

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Wei-Hao Wang avatar
Wei-Hao Wang avatar

So what kind of studies do you plan to do? Photometry is just a type of measurements. In the science side, question is always what you want to do after getting the measurement results.

I don’t often do photometry by myself. I did do it a few times, for example, to compose the HR diagram of M13 (and a few other clusters). On the other hand, the goal of setting up our remote telescope is to train students to use for scientific studies, and photometry is one of the measurement types that students can do. In my advanced observational astronomy classes for master/phd students in a university in Taiwan, I offered our telescope to students for practicing, or for their term projects. The requirement of term project is to use the technique they learned from the class to demonstrate some known astronomical knowledge (new knowledge is better, but not required, as it is hard). Some used it for term projects on composing HR diagrams of clusters, while some others used it for exoplanet transit timing measurements. Obviously these involve photometry. Since this is a class for master/phd students, they are asked to write their own codes or professional python libraries, instead of feeding the data to existing processing pipelines (such as those for exoplanets) and sit and wait for results. Most of the did very well in the past. Some did poorly recently especially after AI started to pretend that it can do anything.

So on the question in the title, in short, I don’t often do it. I just set the example/standard, and then my students do it.

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