Taking heed of a suggestion by the International Astronomical Union, the United Nations declared 2009 the International Year of Astronomy, appropriately marking the four-hundredth anniversary of Galileo's first use of a telescope for his astronomical observations which first confirmed Copernican heliocentric cosmology. Thus the beginnings of modern astronomy are strongly linked to Galileo's observations of four hundred years ago.
When Galileo embarked on using a telescope, he was, in the modern sense, an amateur astronomer—he had not earlier undertaken in-depth celestial observations. Thanks to his persevering work, he soon became one of the major astronomers of his time, committed to Copernican theory. Today's amateur astronomers go through something similar when starting to use a telescope, even if the key element in their work does not seek to prove any theory. The Galileos of today wish to familiarise themselves with and experience the phenomena of the sky for their own sake, and they are fortunate enough to work with instruments Galileo and his contemporaries could not have dreamed of.
Even the most simple amateur telescope of today is a thousand times more effective than Galileo's primitive instrument was. Thanks to the increasingly perfected telescopes and the digital revolution, even amateurs are able to take astrophotos much more spectacular than those taken not too long ago by the cream of the profession using the most expensive super telescopes.
Iván Éder, 29 years old, is one of the better known Hungarian amateur astronomers, but he is known first and foremost for his outstanding astrophotos. It is no exaggaration to declare him to be the best Hungarian astrophotographer, one who fought his way with great perseverance to be counted among the acknowledged astrophotographers worldwide. And he is still at the beginning of his career.

Lunar mosaic using ten frames taken with a compact digital
SLR camera.
Photograph by Iván Éder.

The Horse Head Nebula is one of the most attractive dark nebulae in the sky.
Very hard to detect visually, but an attractive object for astrophotographers.
Photograph by Iván Éder.

[...]

Attila Mizser
is the Secretary General of the Hungarian Astronomy Association and Head of the
Budapest Polaris Observatory. As an editor of a number of publications on astronomy,
he is concerned primarily with astronomy as popular science.