Any Astrophotography people out there?

hrd2imgn

I have really gotten into astrophotography of late with the Milky Way and supermoons.  Anyone else out there a participant?

lastexitlondon

Wow I would love to see more.

Loujoe

@mickeyrat

Great pictures

Gern Blansten

very nice

JeBurkhardt

Great pictures.

GlowGirl

Wow! Those are beautiful. 

Loujoe

How do you get the milky way like that? Special location, camera...

hrd2imgn

well thank you, mine are pretty novice, as I am still learning a tremendous amount of what to do and not do. 

Milky Way shooting  is a pain in the ass, you need to go to a Dark Sky Zone, tons of them in the west (A lot of national parks qualify), not so many near all the big cities due to the light pollution they emit. Basically places where is is pitch black almost and lights from cities, houses, street lights and the moon are limited. You need to pick a night with little to no moon in the sky.  We have a so-so one in Illinois I tried, I could see the milky way just faintly with my eyes.   This shot was just in the middle of nowhere near a cemetery, with no special designation.  You need to be able to take a long exposure shot (up to 30 seconds) to get all the info.  Many of the Amazing shots of the milky way you see are several images stacked and processed together for less noise and better details (I have not learned this yet, so I am a one shot kind of a dude).  You need an aperture (how much your lens opens) that is pretty lo in the number (they are called fast lenses) as they allow a ton more light in.  Sensitivity settings and white balance need to be set a certain way, and then you need to prepare, figure out where they hell the Milky Way will be at the time you will shoot, as it is hard to see if not in certain places, it almost looks like clouds in the night sky.  There are places in the world it is much more visible to the naked eye, but most of the time you need the camera to do the work of seeing it.  Then you need to do a lot of processing of the photo to get noise out, make the colors appear, get the sky black, as when your shutter is open 30 seconds the sky looks grey even though it is night time. It takes a bit of practice processing them to get the colors to pop without losing the natural colors, and to be honest there is some guessing involved with how much and what hue.

They have an amazing app called Photo Pills, that has tools to show you when and where using AI overlays, it is pretty amazing.  Since you can barely see it if at all, the AI overlay of what you see on your phone camera tells you where to set up and shoot.  On a scale of 1-10 I am probably a 4 right now, there are some flippin amazing shots on the web.  I have older gear, need to upgrade to take it to the next level.

A full frame camera is best, but I have seen shots from phones that look amazing (not me), you need a tripod as you cannot hold your camera the 5-30 seconds for the long exposure without it blurring.  A cable or remote or timed shutter release helps a lot too.

What is most amazing is how many stars we are not seeing due to light pollution. I put in a blurryish photo to give you an idea of just how many stars are out there.  The color blobs are other shots of the MW I tried in some differing locations. The dots are stars, not digital noise, the colors of the stars are beautiful, they are not just yellow and white!   The moon was tonight's full moon.

But as big of pain in the ass it is, it is a total blast!  If you like photography, have a manual camera, give it a try, even modest gear can get some great shots.

hrd2imgn

I got interested when I saw a photo of the milky way over one of the national parks we were going to visit last summer.  Totally thought it was fake, and we can't see the milky way what a bunch of shit!  Then I researched it and found you could take your own pics of this with relative ease.....been hooked ever since.

lastexitlondon

I find this amazing and just more beautiful than anything on earth 

Loujoe

Great info and awesome hobby/art. Thanks for sharing all thar info and pics.

hrd2imgn

lastexitlondon said:

I find this amazing and just more beautiful than anything on earth 

All the Hubble and Webb telescope stuff from Nasa of late got me into it.  The universe is unbelievably beautiful

hrd2imgn

if you have not seen the recent Jupiter photos from Juno....damn they are amazing

https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA21973

jerparker20

There’s a guy named Andrew McCarthy. He’s on the social medias. Really amazing deep space/ galaxies/nebula and planet/moon shots. He offers good advice too!

I love the idea of getting into this, but I don’t know.. I did buy a celestron 20x80 binoculars last year. Nothing spectacular, fun to toy around with. 

hrd2imgn

I will have to check him out.  Nasa releases the raw images for people to process, the jupiter ones ate flat out gold.  I will post a few later

hrd2imgn

Images compliments of nasa.  The first is the unedited faw file they allow you to download and process.   The later are how I processed the colorization.

Wobbie

no, but this guy has a PhD in astrophysics.

JPPJ84

hrd2imgn said:

I have really gotten into astrophotography of late with the Milky Way and supermoons.  Anyone else out there a participant?

Me
love your pictures!!
I was lucky enough to be in Northern Sweden last winter. We had an amazing night sky and loads of Northern lights. My fingers were freezing but I stayed out, enjoyed the show and took loads of pictures. 

Haven’t gotten really lucky with the Milky Way in a dark spot, it was too cloudy. But fingers crossed for May, I‘ll be in Cornwall which is perfect for astrophotography!

eddiec

What's your camera/lens setup?

hrd2imgn

Canon 6D  16-35mmL F2.8 _images you saw were with this lens--- and 17-40mm L F4 and 24mm L 1.4 (serious vingettes at 1.4)  I recently upgraded to a R6mk2, so looking forward to some new looks with a mirrorless.  I am finding the 6D was and still is an amazing camera, and a hell of an entry level to full frame photography.

I only did single exposure shots, most of the fancy ones you see on calendars and all over are multi-imaged stacks.

The hard part is learning to process them right, get the exposure right with such a long shutter speed (anywhere from 10-30 seconds)  It has been really fun learning from a million sources and deciding for myself what it real and what is over-processed light.

the key is the dark zone/sky  the rest is just practice and a lot of shitty shots early on, but when you get a good one, damn it is satisfying

my moon shots are with a 100-400 L F4, sometimes with a 2x extender.  So shot at 800mm  looking onto telescopic shots in the future

hrd2imgn

JPPJ84 

love your pictures!!
I was lucky enough to be in Northern Sweden last winter. We had an amazing night sky and loads of Northern lights. My fingers were freezing but I stayed out, enjoyed the show and took loads of pictures. 

Haven’t gotten really lucky with the Milky Way in a dark spot, it was too cloudy. But fingers crossed for May, I‘ll be in Cornwall which is perfect for astrophotography!

I have yet to see the northern lights in person, it is on the bucket list.

I use an APP called PHOTO PILLS- it is amazing, AI mock of the sky so you always know where the milky way is going to be, when it will be there, what time everything.  Worth checking out- great tutorials and features.  Small learning curve though

JPPJ84

hrd2imgn said:

JPPJ84 

love your pictures!!
I was lucky enough to be in Northern Sweden last winter. We had an amazing night sky and loads of Northern lights. My fingers were freezing but I stayed out, enjoyed the show and took loads of pictures. 

Haven’t gotten really lucky with the Milky Way in a dark spot, it was too cloudy. But fingers crossed for May, I‘ll be in Cornwall which is perfect for astrophotography!

I have yet to see the northern lights in person, it is on the bucket list.

I use an APP called PHOTO PILLS- it is amazing, AI mock of the sky so you always know where the milky way is going to be, when it will be there, what time everything.  Worth checking out- great tutorials and features.  Small learning curve though

I’ll check it out! I use Sky Safari Pro for the Milky Way location and PS Align Pro to locate the Polar Star for the correct alignment for 30+ seconds shots. 

hrd2imgn

havent done any Polar alignment or skytracket type stuff. Does polar alignment help?




 said:

hrd2imgn said:

JPPJ84 

love your pictures!!
I was lucky enough to be in Northern Sweden last winter. We had an amazing night sky and loads of Northern lights. My fingers were freezing but I stayed out, enjoyed the show and took loads of pictures. 

Haven’t gotten really lucky with the Milky Way in a dark spot, it was too cloudy. But fingers crossed for May, I‘ll be in Cornwall which is perfect for astrophotography!

I have yet to see the northern lights in person, it is on the bucket list.

I use an APP called PHOTO PILLS- it is amazing, AI mock of the sky so you always know where the milky way is going to be, when it will be there, what time everything.  Worth checking out- great tutorials and features.  Small learning curve though

I’ll check it out! I use Sky Safari Pro for the Milky Way location and PS Align Pro to locate the Polar Star for the correct alignment for 30+ seconds shots. 

JPPJ84

hrd2imgn said:

havent done any Polar alignment or skytracket type stuff. Does polar alignment help?




 said:

hrd2imgn said:

JPPJ84 

love your pictures!!
I was lucky enough to be in Northern Sweden last winter. We had an amazing night sky and loads of Northern lights. My fingers were freezing but I stayed out, enjoyed the show and took loads of pictures. 

Haven’t gotten really lucky with the Milky Way in a dark spot, it was too cloudy. But fingers crossed for May, I‘ll be in Cornwall which is perfect for astrophotography!

I have yet to see the northern lights in person, it is on the bucket list.

I use an APP called PHOTO PILLS- it is amazing, AI mock of the sky so you always know where the milky way is going to be, when it will be there, what time everything.  Worth checking out- great tutorials and features.  Small learning curve though

I’ll check it out! I use Sky Safari Pro for the Milky Way location and PS Align Pro to locate the Polar Star for the correct alignment for 30+ seconds shots. 

Oh yeah, with an exposure time over 30 seconds stars become distorted unless you use a skytracker. Below that you’re fine though

hrd2imgn

as narrow as we got in Chicagoland