About Me
Hello, Stargazers!
My name is Claudio Oriani and I want to share my astrophotography journey.
Everything started in Italy (my home country) when I was five. I have fond memories of this little child who was turning the pages of an astronomy book and was looking at beautiful images of the Moon, the planets, and the stars.
My first telescope arrived on a December night in 1982, when my father bought me a 60/700 refractor telescope with an altazimuth mount, 2 eyepieces (20mm and a 6mm), a solar filter and a 2x Barlow lens. I started looking up right away and whenever the night sky was clear. I would have never imagined that this little telescope would have been my loyal companion for almost 30 years!
I remember my first WOW moments: the first time I saw Saturn with its rings, the Sun with the solar spots, Jupiter and Mars, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Next, I started writing my observation logs in my notebooks. Some highlights include Halley’s Comet in 1986, Jupiter with its Galilean moons, the great opposition of Mars in 1988, a beautiful lunar eclipse while I was on vacation in Greece (August 17, 1989), my summer nights under an incredible dark sky in Italy (Sardinia and Calabria), my visual observations of the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter in July 1994, the great comets in 1996-1997 (Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp), and my first astrophotography attempts with the old-fashioned 35mm film.
In the meanwhile, I was an avid reader of astronomy books and magazines (L’Astronomia – rivista di scienza e cultura, an astronomy magazine founded by Corrado Lamberti and Margherita Hack), I was watching the incredible images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune released by the NASA Voyager missions and I was following the news about the Space Shuttle missions.
My next step was to try taking pictures of the planets and the Moon through my first reflex camera, a T-Ring, an adapter for my telescope and a tele-extender (not very successful, I have to confess).
Several years later (in 2008) I decided to upgrade my setup and purchased my first serious telescope: a Celestron 8 Advanced GT (a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with an equatorial mount, the Celestron CG-5).
I had the chance to enjoy this versatile scope for personal use and for public outreach in first in Rome, Italy, then in Canada.
In 2015, I moved to Toronto and shortly after I had the chance to meet some members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Toronto Centre (RASC). I decided to join RASC and started actively volunteering doing public outreach (in person and virtually).
In the last few years I focused more on my astrophotography setup and skills, on the planetary imaging front and more recently on deep sky objects (DSO) and Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA).
My astrophotography accessories have been increasing over time: a DSLR camera, a dedicated planetary CMOS camera and a DSO cooled camera, light pollution and narrowband filters, a new APO refractor telescope (the Explore Scientific ED80 CF), electronic focusers, dedicated software and hardware, and more.
Finally, I decided to turn this project idea into reality. I built this website, a YouTube channel and an Instagram channel.
My goal here is to share my astrophotography journey in the hope to give some tips and inspire others to look up in the sky.
You will find information about how I plan my observations, my setup (telescope, camera and filters, software and post-processing), how I troubleshoot incorrect settings in my setup and much more.
But above all, I will share my final images from the planets to star clusters, galaxies and nebulae, as well as some special astronomical events, such as eclipses, comets, occultations, and ISS transits.
Now please take your seat, fasten your seat belts because the journey is about to start!