CCAS Astrophotography
Here are photographs taken by our members. If you have original photographs that you would like posted on our site, please contact us!

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Home Telescope, Phase 1 by Pete LaFrance Located in Avondale, Pennsylvania, the observatory houses Pete's 8" telescope. From here Pete takes most of his astrophotographs. To see more of Pete's original astrophotography, visit his site www.plafrance.org.

Self-Portrait by Pete LaFrance Pete LaFrance in his observatory. Typical exposures of deep sky objects are 15 to 20 minutes in duration. A real strain on the eyes, the results are usually worth the effort. It's also typical to expose an entire roll of film only to produce 10 or so good quality pictures.

Comet Hale-Bopp by Pete LaFrance Taken from his home observatory.

The Great Orion Nebula by Pete LaFrance A 5-minute exposure with Kodak Royal Gold ISO 400 film. M42 is perhaps the most celebrated object in the night sky. A cloud of gas and dust, it has a diameter of 15 light years. That has enough gas to make a cluster of thousands of stars! To the human eye M42 appears greenish, as do most nebula. But photographs show that its true color is redish-orange. The reason for this color difference is that the human eye has poor sensitivity to colors at low light levels. M42 lies 1300 light years away.

The Sun by Pete LaFrance This picture was taken on April 20, 1998 thru a Day Star filter. M27, the Dumbell Nebula by Pete LaFrance M27, the Dumbell Nebula, is a large bright plantetary nebula. Unmistakable in the telescope or with binoculars.