A Half-Century of Starlight: The Journey of Paul Mayo

Paul Mayo is a semi-retired software developer and a passionate astrophotographer based in New South Wales, Australia. With a journey that stretches back to the 1970s, Paulhas witnessed—and been part of—the evolution of astrophotography over the past five decades. Come with ZWO and step into his astrophotography journey…

All Began in the Early 1970s

My personal astrophotography journey began back in the early 1970s as a young boy growing up in the space-era, a time when the first men had orbited Earth, when the Moon landings were taking place and the prestigious Voyager spacecraft were launched. Interestingly, back then galaxies were still called extra-galactic nebulae in most textbooks, most astronomical images were black and white film images and the Norton’s Star Atlas was about the only book of star charts one could find in a library. Captivated and fascinated by the universe I asked my grandmother for a telescope and months later there it was, a 60mm refractor on a wooden tripod, as an eleven year old kid I was blown away, truly impressed. Not long thereafter I would ask my father if I could borrow his film SLR camera to take pictures with the telescope, I wanted to share what I could see through the telescope with other people. I had no idea what to do, so I pointed the telescope at the Moon, held the SLR with its 50mm lens up to the eyepiece of telescope and started snapping away. I patiently waited a week for the film to be processed and returned. To my disappointment the prints showed absolutely nothing! About ten years later after college and as a young adult now employed as a software developer, I purchased an equatorially mounted reflector telescope and a film SLR camera. Photographic film was the only choice, I would sort particular types of film that resulted in the best astro images and at times I used what was called hyper-sensitized film that provided better results than off the shelf film. Eventually I would build my own CCD camera, known as the Cookbook CCD camera, it revealed magnitude 15 stars with just 1 second exposures and revealed galaxies like I’d never seen before, though film still had much better resolution though required much longer exposure times. Guiding had to be done manually, by watching a guide star through an illuminated guiding eyepiece on a separate guide scope while making tracking adjustments with buttons on a hand controller. Astronomical CCD cameras became available, however they really were astronomically priced and unaffordable to most. Then around the turn of the century came digital SLR cameras, this was a major leap forward for those on a budget, I could instantly see the results of my exposure, no more waiting for a photo lab and the most amazing improvement, I could now stack images, which wasn’t possible with film images.

By then, a now very experienced software developer I worked for several years on developing what would become an international selling deep sky charting and telescope control system called STAR Atlas:PRO, I needed something to provide me with highly detailed deep sky star charts and help me plan what to image as well as control my telescope. The astronomy software would go on to sell worldwide and also used to sponsor star parties and astronomy outreach programs in Australian schools.

In the two decades that followed I would progress through quite a few different astro-modified DSLRs and cooled DSLRs and then in recent years I did it, I bought an ASI ZWO 2600MC PRO camera and all I can say is wow, what an improvement !

Fall in Love with the Dark: Paul Mayo’s Obsession

Deep Sky astrophotography is one of the most fascinating and rewarding astronomical hobbies you could ever hope to become involved in, that’s what I think. There’s always a good level of excitement and anticipation when you’re aiming your telescope and its attached camera into the darkness of interstellar space. This is particularly the case when the purpose is to take long-exposure images of objects you can’t otherwise see, even when looking through the telescope. All going well, you’ll walk away with your own astrophotographs that reveal otherwise unseen objects in this amazing universe all around us.

You can show your astrographs to your family, friends and colleagues – display them on the internet and even get them displayed on websites like this one. This extremely fascinating hobby of astrophotography mixes all the facets of amateur astronomy with several other interesting fields such as cameras, photography, computers, image processing, automated equipment and even building things like, well in my case, backyard observatories. It’s a hobby that has, for more than fifty years, kept me consistently interested, busy and striving for better astropics.

Likely the greatest change astronomy and astrophotography have made to my life is in developing a good understanding of our place in the universe, becoming aware of the trillions of galaxies each filled with billions of suns, the likely countless exo-planets and the incomprehensible distances in the universe, has given me a world view like no other.

Key Achievements

For the past decade Australia’s largest optical telescope facility at Siding Spring Observatory have continued to sell a range of my astrophotography work in their visitors centre. It’s a story that began many years ago when my wife suggested I sell my astro images, while I laughed and thought no person would buy them, my wife persisted and soon after we had printed and framed a variety of the best images and displayed them at a city market stall. To my surprise, I didn’t expect it, there was great public interest and we actually sold a couple of hundred dollars worth of photos in just a few hours. The public interest and sales continued and before long we purchased our own framing and printing equipment and outfitted a mobile shop with a large range of my astro images. We took the photo display to the markets in major cities. It boomed! The display of astro images made our market stall one of the most popular attractions, we setup a website (AustralianNightSky.com.au) and began selling them on-line too, and at times we would work every day of the week to keep up with the demand. This is the greatest accomplishment I’ve made in astrophotography, to have over the past decade sold literally tens of thousands of my own astro-images presented as framed wall art to the public.

The great thing about having sold so many images is to have achieved what I originally set out to do and that was to share the universe with others, to take astro-images so everyday people can see what’s in the universe around us and maybe share the amazement and wonder that I do.

As I did with STAR Atlas:PRO donating copies to astronomy outreach programs for Australian Schools, I also donate some of my astrophotography to schools hoping to make young minds aware of the universe.

The other major accomplishment that stemmed from my astrophotography hobby was the inspiration it gave me to develop the STAR Atlas:PRO Star Charting and Telescope control software. The software was developed to suit the needs of a deep sky astrophotographer, to be able to locate deep sky objects, slew your telescope to its location, plan observations for future nights along with many other useful features. The software contains 24.4-million celestial objects including 1.3-million galaxies and produces very comprehensive deep sky charts allowing me to plan my images well and even identify faint fuzzies in the background of images.

Astrophotography Setup

My primary astro imaging rig consists of a Sky Watcher Quattro 10-inch f/4 telescope with an aplanatic coma corrector mounted on a Losmandy G-11 mount with onboard Gemini control computer and STAR Atlas: PRO software control for the scope. Mounted on top is an 80mm f/5 guide scope with a ZWO ASI 290MM guide camera. The imaging camera is the ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO camera. Phd2 software automates the guiding and I use ASIStudio DSO Imaging to capture the images. For wide field images I use the Samyang/Rokinon 135mm f/2 lens with the ZWO lens adapter and the 2600MC PRO camera mounted on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer mount without auto guiding.

The ZWO ASI 290MM camera is used as my guide camera on the 80mm guidescope, with 1-second exposures it works really well and not matter where I point the scope it always reveals stars without the need to adjust the guide scope’s pointing position.

The ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO camera was selected to replace my astro-modified Canon EOS 6D Mk-1 DSLR camera, which incidentally has the lowest noise sensor I’ve ever used in any DSLR. I certainly have to say switching from a modded DSLR to a cooled astro camera with a high sensitivity sensor is the best thing I ever did in terms of improving my images. To my amazement, I operate the cooling on the 2600MC PRO at -10°C and the noise in the images is so low or non-existent that, in most cases, you do not need to subtract dark frames. Aside from the fact this camera produces great images, even on hot summer nights, the other useful feature is that the camera has a USB hub, the guide scope USB cable simply plugs into the usb-hub on the main camera which reduces the number of cables running to the telescope.

ASI2600 Pro Series

All imaging is performed from my backyard, I’m fortunate enough to live in a rural location with a dark Bortle class 2 sky located in the north-west of the state of New South Wales, Australia.

A Beginner’s Advice to the Astrophotography

Have patience, mastering astrophotography doesn’t come easily or quickly, like any specialist field it takes time to learn what you need to know. The good news is that it’s an enjoyable learning curve that involves using lots of fun tech equipment. Learning the basics like how to polar align and balance your mount, how to focus accurately and how to stack and process your images are good starting places.

Consider the mount as an important piece of the equation, it must be good enough to track the movement of the sky and track it well. The mount needs to be strong enough that you do not exceed its payload capacity and your payload will ideally be less, or much less, than the rated maximum.

Between clouds, family and work commitments and the full Moon, the opportunity to do deep sky imaging can be rare and there’s nothing worse when the opportunity arrives, your under the stars, then something goes wrong with your gear and your left missing out on the photons you could otherwise be capturing. It’s a great idea to make sure everything is working prior to being under the stars. I keep everything as simple as possible to help reduce the likeliness of a problem occurring that stops you from imaging. I always plan ahead by knowing which celestial object I’m going to image and I will also have a second object planned to image in case for some reason I cannot image the first planned object for that night, such as one single cloud hovering over your primary target, true story!

Thank you to ZWO for the ASIWEEK award, wishing everyone clear skies ahead.

Note: ASIWEEK is your chance to showcase your astrophotography skills and share your amazing shots with the community. We encourage all ZWO users to participate by submitting your best work. Each quarter and at the end of the year, we’ll be rewarding the top photographers with some great products for free. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be recognized and win! Want to join? Just post your wonderful image in ZWO Astrophotography group and add hashtag #ASIWEEK！

Join ZWO Astrophotography group now

https://www.facebook.com/groups/zwoasiusers

See complete rules here: https://bit.ly/2ZMZizi