Nice! I love the Orion nebula!
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That's awesome! What do you use to achieve those photos?Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Nice images. The 2017 eclipse was the first one I tried to photograph. It's what got me interested in eclipses and solar imaging.
What I like about astrophotography is, there's always room for improvement. I can shoot the same object year after year and continually improve it by learning new techniques and/or upgrading/refining the equipment and processes I use.
Take this progression of the Orion nebula for example. I have been shooting it on and off for about 10 years, but I only recently started getting higher quality images. While there has been a lot of improvement, I am still not satisfied with the final result and will definitely be shooting it some more in the future while learning how to get better at editing.
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Currently I use a mirrorless camera, lenses between 100-700mm (depending on what im targeting), and a star tracker.That's awesome! What do you use to achieve those photos?
Nice! Thanks for sharing.Currently I use a mirrorless camera, lenses between 100-700mm (depending on what im targeting), and a star tracker.
I started off with a basic dslr and a 55-250mm kit lens. You can actually achieve decent results with this gear. Now I never did because back then, I was taking single images and trying to edit them into something great. What you have to do is take hundreds of images and run them through a stacking software (deepskystacker). This has been one of the biggest improvements for me.
For instance, this is a single 2 second image of andromeda galaxy shot with a 100mm lens on a tripod. Not much to look at.
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This is a stack of 15, 2 second images. A little better, but not great.
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This is a stack of 240, 2 second images. Much improved.
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Using a star tracker is the next step for improving image quality. A star tracker let's you take long exposures. Instead of a 2 second long exposure, you can take one 30 seconds (or longer). This means you can gather a lot more light with much less noise. You still take dozens or hundreds of photos and run them through the stacking software. This is a stack of 48, 25 second long images....
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The setup on the right is what I use for pretty much all my astro shots now. That's the star tracker. I used it during the eclipse to track the sun so I didn't have to constaly adjust the camera to keep the sun in frame. The left camera is on a gimbal so I had to adjust it every couple minutes to keep the sun centered up....
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I like that cartoon.Looking at my most recent post, I realized I made a small mistake.
Somehow, a comic panel of The Far Side snuck into the batch. I guess I mis-clicked and added it.
Oh well, it’s a funny panel.
Anyway, let me explain two of my photos.
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Yeah, that’s how slow Neptune moves in the sky.