I've been looking into 'deep sky' astrophotography recently, and yesterday I made my first shot. The conditions were far from ideal: The Netherlands have horrible light pollution as well as generally cloudy night skies, I have suboptimal gear (wonky tripod, short lens, no tracker), and my shooting and postprocessing techniques leave a lot to be desired. Still, I'm very pleased with my first try. The photo shows Andromeda: an entire galaxy some 2.5 million light years away. That means that the photons that fell onto my camera's sensor yesterday evening, have been traveling since the appearance of the very first hominids (homo habilis). I hope it makes them happy that I capured them (the photons, not the hominids). The strong light in the center is thus not a star, but a collection of literally billions of stars - the galaxy's core. The nebulous swirly bit is the galaxy's disc - with spiral arms just like our own Milky Way. It's the farthest object in the photo: individual stars at that distance don't resolve and so, all the stars you see are much (much) closer and inside our own galaxy. The photo itself was taken on a Canon 7Dii, using a 85mm 1.8 lens. It's comprised of 20 stacked exposures, each at 6 seconds, ISO 1600 and f/2.0. Stacking the images requires aligning them (since the stars - or rather the earth - moves during shooting) but it greatly improves the signal to noise ratio. I've cropped the image substantially, didn't do any sharpening, but I did play around with the histogram a little to increase the visibility of the nebula. I know that there are a lot of space enthousiasts on the forum - although it's usually geared towards the NASA program and its Speedmasters. Still, I thought (hoped) there would be other astrophotographers on these boards. Please share anything you've shot here: deep sky objects, wide field stuff, astroscapes, lunar eclipses - whatever. Maybe we can learn from each other!
This was taken in north London last year, point and shoot camera, hand held, auto mode, no processing. Under all those circumstances I think it came out pretty well.
Nice one! I shot the 'blood moon' last year (super moon coinciding with a lunar eclipse, which results in the redding color). The very low brightness of the moon results in some (faintly) visible stars - something you could normally achieve only by using multiple shots that are exposed differently.
The Moon will reach its' perigee next week (nov. 14th) offering the biggest supermoon of the century! I guess it will be the perfect night to shoot!
I'm not worth anything as a photographer (let alone an astrophotographer), but I've managed to get a couple of shots of the northern lights. This one was taken just outside of Reykjavik, Iceland, which is an absolutely gorgeous part of the world.
That's nothing short of spectacular! It's a dream of mine to someday see (and shoot) the northern lights. I'm given to understand that it's not actually all that easy to capture it, but your photo looks amazing so I think you're selling yourself short Love the detail in the foreground that gives an impression of scale. Is that a gallows?
That one belongs in the apostrophotography thread I'd love to be an apostrophotographer myself, but I don't have a decent macro lens.
Hey, thanks! That night it was fairly easy to capture because the aurora was going crazy and there was barely any moonlight or other ambient light. Other nights my partner and I have stood out in the freezing cold for hours and seen nothing. She's very patient. There are actually times when the camera "sees" more than you can with the naked eye. When it's good, the aurora definitely lives up to the hype. Oh, and gallows? Haha No, I think it was powerlines in the foreground. Their inclusion in the shot to give a sense of scale was TOTALLY an intentional compositional decision on my part...
A nice little shot of the sun photographed in Hydrogen-Alpha light. A unique look at our sun's surface.
One of the most disappointing moments of my life was going Northern Lights spotting. They looked spectacular on camera but to the naked eye they were barely visible, and it's not just my eyes, everyone on the trip said the same. The guide had a super-night-photography camera and they looked incredible with no post processing at all. Human eyes are just not that good.
Sorry to hear it - that has happened to us too. We've probably been unlucky as often as we've been lucky with the aurora. It's a fickle phenomenon to be sure. I remember the night I took the photo above, we saw the green glow gradually build up in the camera viewfinder for a while before we saw anything with the naked eye.
That is a tremendous first effort @dialstatic -- nicely done! Astrophotography is hard, with a steep (and seemingly endless) learning curve but it looks like you're well on your way. Here are a few astrophotos of mine and a story to go along with them, posted elsewhere on this forum: https://omegaforums.net/threads/a-watch-and-a-space-story.29283/ This is probably my most recent astrophoto, taken with a 90mm refractor from the patio of our home:
Me and the missus spent a week north of Churchill on the shores of Canada's Hudson Bay, primarily to look at polar bears, which we saw, amongst a host of other critters. The whole week we were there, the solar wind activity was at some of its highest ever record and Aurora activity was hide as a result. Of course it was overcast and rained or snowed the entire time, so we didn't get to see that. We did get to see these:- But that's a bit off-topic, so back to the original request. So now I'm a little confused as to what's required if apostrophes are out and aururas are okay Is this what you had in mind? or maybe this? Failing that, all I have are these wide field shots that I stayed up until the wee-smalls to get of the Gemini meteor shower last year. Billed as the biggest it had ever been and a spectacle not to be missed, we saw maybe six individual meteors all night. The sky above us is very clear and the rural environment cuts down light pollution, so you do get to see a lot Both were taken with a Canon 7D with a 16-25mm zoom lens at f2.8 for a single 30 second exposure
Wow. The story in the post you linked to is truly amazing. Thanks for the compliment about my first try - coming from a guy who basically discovered two planets, it means a lot! Great moon shot with incredible detail! I think I see Buzz Aldrin's missing Speedmaster there ;-)
Got to love the iPhone Sky Tracker app With 5 minutes notice I can catch the ISS passing over my house every few days now in Italy.
Cairns in Australia in November 2012. My first and only total eclipse. The comet was McNaught 2006. It was the brightest comet in the last 40 years. it got brighter as it crossed down to the Southern Hemisphere. Here is the mid tail of the comet - just huge.