Amateur astronomer reveals beauty of the cosmos from his backyard

Amateur astronomer captures amazing images Amateur astronomer David Hoskin captures incredible images of the sun, and of deep space.

David Hoskin started out as an amateur astronomer around six years ago when his sister suggested it as a retirement hobby.

"I said yeah, so I went out, bought a telescope and haven't looked back since," said Hoskin.

Hoskin captures a variety of astronomy images from nightscapes to solar planetary imaging and what he describes as 'anything neat in the night sky'.

To capture his images, Hoskin has telescopes, DSLR cameras and high resolution web cameras to capture video and later process the footage to create still imaging filled with detail.

Describing how he looks at the sun, Hoskin says, "I look at it through white light, white light filters, where I can see the whole spectrum and also with a hydrogen alpha telescope which just lets me see one wave length of light which shows the detail in the sun."

He says the images he captures now are orders of magnitude better than what you could get from Mount Palomar in the 1960's.

"It's something you couldn't even imagine 40 years ago," says Hoskin, "so it's pretty incredible."