First of all, Digital Astrophotography is a beautiful book. If you never try any of the techniques inside the book, you've still got some amazing pictures to look at. Of course, those pictures are meant to inspire you to take your own, so if you're only looking, you are certainly missing part of the point.

You don't have to be a photography genius to use this book. Stefan Seip has that part covered, and he takes you step-by-step through the process to set your camera up and start photographing the stars. No, not those stars — we're talking extraterrestrial heavenly bodies, not Hollywood.

Chapter 1 gives a good overview of the topic, including a brief overview of the types of telescopes you can purchase. The book then covers the types of cameras you should buy, which really depends on the types of pictures you want to take.

Surprisingly, you can get some great planetary pictures with a webcam, especially something with a removable lens like a Phillips ToUCam 740k (which is one of the cameras the book recommends). By taking the lens off, and attaching it directly to the telescope, you can get some incredible pictures, as Seip shows in the book. To me, this is the epitome of astrophotography, and is probably the route most beginners will go. Seip also covers standard digital cameras (digital compact cameras, without removable lenses) in chapter 2, though it seems a bit more difficult to me to connect the camera to the telescope. Since I've already got a DCC, I'll be trying this technique out before buying a new webcam, though.

There's also a chapter dedicated to digital SLR cameras. Again it seems like there's a lot of effort to connect the camera to the telescope, but the pictures you can get would be totally worth it, especially the lunar landscape pictures. Obviously not the most economical method, but certainly worthwhile.

And, of course, you can always get an astronomical CCD camera, something specially designed to take pictures of the stars. This is a must for deep-sky photography like nebulae and clusters of stars, but is the most expensive method of all. They are also much more complex to use, and cannot be used for any other purpose. If Astronomy or Sky And Telescope start buying your pictures, then maybe you can invest in an astronomical CCD. Otherwise, the other options are best.

Seip does an outstanding job of breaking down a complex subject so that beginners can understand and enjoy it. The pictures in the book show the potential of the techniques he demonstrates. The only problem with the book is that you WILL want to be out in the middle of the night with a telescope, a laptop, and a camera, taking pictures of your own.