Page "Astrophotography" Paragraph 12

Astronomical photography did not become a serious research tool until the late 19th century, with the introduction of dry plate photography.

It was first used by Sir William Huggins and his wife Margaret Lindsay Huggins, in 1876, in their work to record the spectra of astronomical objects.

In 1880 Henry Draper used the new dry plate process with an 11-inch ( 28 cm ) refracting telescope to make a 51-minute exposure of the Orion Nebula, the first photograph of a nebula ever made.

A breakthrough in astronomical photography came in 1883, when amateur astronomer Andrew Ainslie Common used the dry plate process to record several images of the same nebula in exposures up to 60 minutes with a 36-inch ( 91 cm ) reflecting telescope that he constructed in the backyard of his home in Ealing, outside London.

These images for the first time showed stars too faint to be seen by the human eye.