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This is my first time here, it seems to be here to show all of us the most interesting images of astronomy. I am learning photography and want to capture the stars in the best way. Can anyone help me? Or can you share some good shooting experiences with me? Thanks all |
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Hi @williamocasio , The most essential piece of equipment for astrophotography is a star tracker mount. It will allow you to take multiple long exposures (30"+) of the sky over the night. Naturally, it is advisable to have a lense with at least 135 mm focal lenght, to shoot large objects like Andromeda galaxy, or Orion nebula. But even with a wide angle lense (16 mm, 35 mm etc), you will get excellent shots of Milky Way galaxy. Then you will need to learn how to stack and process these images. Youtube is full of very high quality tutorials for the beginners and people on this site are always ready to help with an advise. Clear skies and good luck! |
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Hello William, Astrophotography is a rabbit hole, so be careful! There are many different ways to do it. None of those ways is "the perfect way" and isn't better than the other.. everyone has their own style. I'd focus on milky way stuff, or maybe some of the larger broadband targets. Like the Andromeda galaxy. A DSLR, a lens between 50 and 200mm and a star tracker. My best advice would be the YouTube page " Nebula Photos " Mainly because he has good guides on beginners and beginning setups with just a DSLR and a star tracking mount. And you can start getting good images with minimal investment. For example: this video where he only uses a camera + lens + tripod with good explanations. Other YouTubers are great too, there is loads to watch and to learn. But many others do have some more advanced rigs and gear, which might be something you don't want to "worry" about yet as a beginner. |
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Hi @williamocasio , I totally agree with the answers above. The "Nebula Photos" youtube channel is a real good starting point. Nico explains things in a very detailed way and he has done his research very well. He is also a great astro photographer himself and I really like the way he is explaining things. For me, there is only one thing to add. Even if you understand the basics well, there will me so much stuff left where you will run into problems. You have to be patient and you have to take your time while imaging. If you then have a specific problem, come back and we'll help you with that. Explaining the whole basics is a bit much to write about. The handbook of astro photography may have thousands of pages. But maybe, we could suggest an order of things for you to look for. This is mine: 1) using a camera (with a lens) and a tripod (as "Nebula Photos" suggests) for imaging the night sky (look for things like "long exposures", "rule of 500th" or "star trails") 2) star trackers and how they work (big mounts are basically the same thing) 3) generate calibration frames and stacking images (with Deep sky stacker or similar) 4) using a telescope (on your mount) and adapting your camera to it I guess if you made it up to this point, you have enough experience to select the next things yourself... There may be other users that correct this order, but for me this worked so far. Clear Skies Christian |
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| One more vote to binge watch the Nebula Photos videos by @Nico Carver and the AstroBackyard channel by @Trevor Jones. |
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| Besides the videos, also take a look at this book, The Deep Sky Imaging Primer by Charles Bracken. It is easy to read and provides clear explanations as to the equipment and processing steps involved for astrophotography. |
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When I started Astrophotography I have learned a lot form the youtube videos of Peter Zelinka. Another possibility is to join a club near to you. There will be a lot of people who can show you everything. |
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Hello and welcome to the hobby I see people have recommended "Nebula Photos" and I will add myself to that recommendation. He is very informative on entry level gear and techniques. If you plan to use any lenses in the slightly higher focal length ranges, a sky tracker will be a necessity. But to give it a go before investing in a tracker with your camera and lenses of shorter focal lengths, taking Milkyway photos is quite easy with a little practice. To do this all you need is the camera/lens and a tripod. I would highly recommend the app: Photopills. Within this app, there are all kinds of helpful tools, but the one I use all the time is the "Spot Stars" tool. You can plug your camera in and the desired focal length you are using, or thinking of maybe using and it will tell you the longest exposure you can take (with no tracking) before star trails start to appear. This allows you to take nice, pinpoint stars (or have it set to "barely noticeable trails" for slightly longer exposures). Just remember when shooting at whatever shutter speed, to keep your eye on that histogram, you don't want it shifting too far to the right, I aim for about 1/3 from the left. You can change the aperture or ISO settings to achieve this. When done with a night of imaging, you can then take however many sub exposures you took, plug them into a program like Deepsky Stacker, and do some post processing work in apps like Photoshop, and make beautiful Milkyway photos. If/when you are ready to take the financial leap into tracked photography, there are many entry level ones, I personally use the Skyguider Pro for my portable rig with great results. Or move onto even larger rigs that have higher payload capacities, go-to functionality, and guiding to take even longer exposures. But be careful as @Steven de Vet said... This hobby is a rabbit hole, and you can find yourself spending many thousands of dollars on gear. You can also look at youtube channels: Astrobackyard and Peter Zelinka for information as well. I am still new to this hobby as well, but I hope you find it as fun and rewarding as I do! Below is my Milkyway image from Alton Lake in the Boundary Waters, a bortle 1 area. It was just a single 60 second exposure on my Skyguider Pro and the Cygnus Loop Region through a 50mm Lens in a bortle 4 area, which was a single 180 second exposure on my iOptron GEM28. So a lot is possible when the total integration is not that long from dark skies  Milkyway over Alton Lake MN  Veil Region of Cygnus I hope you stick with the hobby and that this was somewhat helpful! Enjoy the nights -Chase |
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Hey buddy, DO NOT be discouraged. The first time i tried astrophotography i shot the hercules globular cluster and it turned out very poor. But on my 4th session i was able to get a very nice picture of the orion nebula, running man, horse head and flame nebula all in 1 picture. As stated by others your most important piece of equipment is the mount. I have a skywatcher eqm 35 pro which is the "budget" mount costing around 700$, then i use a canon t5i with a skytech cls-ccd filter and then comes the lens, i use a rokinon 135mm f/2.0 with is about 500$. Alot of people on here is auto guiding, but i do not, the mount is good for tracking for up to 120s exposures. So the steps i would take would be, 1 polar align your mount, 2 do a 3 star alignment use the stellarium app to help find stars, 3 test your alignment by slewing to a known object like betelgeuse, if the test object is in the veiw finder then your good! After all that, You should be good to find an object, like the orion nebula cause its very easy to photo, then set your lens to about f2.8 then probably iso800 then take a 30' exposure picture then watch the magic happen. Also youtube has a great gimp 2.0 tutorial on how to process pictures, gimp 2.0 is the free software of you dont want to pay for photoshop. Cheers, good luck, and clear skies to you.  |
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I just wanted to say that this will be a journey. It's not all about fantastic equipment and upgrades. Start with a basic setup, learn the trade and only upgrade when you really need to. Here are some photos all taken with the same telescope, tripod and mount which my wife bought me as a birthday present. First photo I posted on Facebook (M81):  Then, having spent a few weeks learning about stuff, this was my second of the same target:  Andromeda (M31) is always a good target (taken with a Sony NEX 5N on the same scope)  I took this one this week with the same equipment of a much fainter object (the crescent nebula). One thing to note about stars is that they are not all the same colour ... they are the jewels in the sky. As such, making sure you don't get them overexposed and all turning out white is important:  I still have a lot to learn, but what I have learned is that once you have a basic level of astrophotography equipment then most of it is about skill and experience rather than the kit itself. To get started I would suggest: * Spending money on the mount/tripod ... a mount that can be controlled from a computer (using ASCOM) lets you find things and lets you track the sky. * The scope itself doesn't have to be that expensive (mine is a £380 8" Newtonian) * Autoguiding will be essential for any of the nebula stuff. A basic autoguider will do a great job and won't cost the earth * I got great photos using an old mirrorless camera connected to the scope; mine had to be manually triggered which meant I spent hours outside in the cold. I suggest if you go down that route you look for an old Canon DSLR that can be remotely controlled by a computer. Good luck with the hobby and hope you enjoy it as much as the rest of us. |
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This is my first time here, it seems to be here to show all of us the most interesting images of astronomy. I am learning photography and want to capture the stars in the best way. Can anyone help me? Or can you share some good shooting experiences with me? Stars are quite easy actually. They are: 1) points 2) at infinity 3) relatively bright 4) at fixed positions to each other. (1) and (2) mean you need perfect focus at infinity and as little aberrations as possible, anything that's wrong in your optics (e.g. astigmatism) stars will reveal it. So i your lens is f/2 stop it down at e.g. f/2.8 to make it a little sharper. (3) means you must be careful not to expose too long, otherwise you will burn them (I think for stars anything longer than 5 seconds is pushing it, typically I'd say 2 or 3). (4) means you can take multiple exposures and stack them to reduce noise and artifacts. Obviously pay attention to the framing. Stars tend to form pretty patterns. That's it, in a nutshell. Oh, and use raw. Not JPEG. JPEG throws away too much information and the in-camera raw-to-JPEG algorithms are not designed for things like stars anyway. Cheers, D. |
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If you really want to photograph stars (not nebulae, galaxies, planets or other flat objects), I have a tip for a nice effect: Put a diffusion filter in front of the lens. This will make the stars bigger, more colorful and "more beautiful". Also you can see the constellations better. On this website you can see the effect. |
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Hello, William! I share your desire of taking great astrophotos. I'll give some tips, that will help to start your path to such a unique kind of photography: 1. Only RAW/ While photoshooting the Milky Way don't ever use JPG, 'cause you will lose a lot of details and colors. 2. You should find yourself at the right place at the right moment. Get to the spot before the sun is down, it will help you to focuc. 3. Try not to shoot on cloudy nights. THe ideal photoshoot should take place on days when the moon is not visible. Always check the weather conditions and the lunar cycle before setting off. 4. Avoid light distrortion. It will be better to go to the countryside to capture the sky What gear do you need for beginning? You will need an astrocamera. The middle ground is 14-bit one, Sony matrix usually. QHY, ASI are time tested brends. Don't pay attention to the quantity of pixels but to their size, cause your choice fully depends in scope you've got. As for me now I have Canon 5d mkIII, and for now it's enough for me. When I was a beginer I used QHY-294c And some words about processing. There is no single recipe and set of programs for processing deep sky images. I would recommend feeling everything with your own hands. The set of software available is very wide. The set for planets is standard nowadays - Pipp, AutoStakkert, WinJupos, AstraImage. Post-processing in any case is done either in Photoshop or in a similar editor that works with layers. It is important to choose such tools and techniques that will allow you to quickly reach a serious level or move towards it. Otherwise, astrophotography is not satisfying. Wish you good luck! Don't get discouraged on your path to stars! |
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Bruce Donzanti: Agreed. Easy to read and comprehensive. A great place to start..≥ |
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| This thread is 4 months old and the original poster has not logged on to Astrobin since November 2021... |
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"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" "Practice, practice, practice!" While I agree with a lot that has been said before - in particular the recommendations of Nebula Photos, Astrobackyard and Charles Bracken - for a complete beginner to photography I would strongly recommend to first learn the most important aspects of photography: 1) Learn the ins and outs of your equipment. You don't want to find yourself in a dark location figuring out why your equipment doesn't work as you expect. 2) It may be considered part of step 1) but practising proper manual exposure, handling long exposure times and how your camera performs at different ISO values and in different temperature ranges is a must. 3) Study and practice the fundamentals of image composition. As long as you don't manage to create well composed daytime images, you have little chance to come up with good wide field astrophotos 4) Get acquainted with image processing and not to forget with organizing your photos in a structured way. Get used to backing up your photos regularily. Over a lifetime you're going to take a lot of them and losing important ones is painful. Just like some others I would recommend to first start with a tripod - buy the best one you can afford. Learn to photograph untracked nightscapes and take it from there. Milky Way, Constellations and Meteor Showers are a good way to start. Once you're ready to move on to deep sky objects I recommend the books "Astrophotography on the go" by Joseph Ashley and "50 best Astrophotography Targets for Beginners" by Alan Hall. The first one discusses all aspects on how to get into astrophotography in case you don't have an own backyard observatory. The second one is a very practice oriented guide to some worthwhile targets. In particular I like that the author shows how a single image of the target looks like. While this obviously heavily depends on the specific setup and conditions, it helps to manage expectations of a beginner. Concerning the most important piece of equipment I still believe strongly in the recommendation of German wildlife photographer Fritz Pölking: "The most important piece of equipment is a waste basket to dump your bad photos". In the digital age you even get it for free! Learning means trying to improve and you only improve by acquiring good and useful habits. Trying to rescue half-baked photos by digital (over-)processing is not helpful on the long run. Have fun and clear skies Wolfgang |
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This thread is 4 months old and the original poster has not logged on to Astrobin since November 2021... Binge watching youtube videos ? |
