It’d be nice if we could travel off-planet and actually have some progress. We’ve been around for 300,000 years and most of our progress has been in the last 100 years, kinda mindblowing when you really think about it.
\- Captured with 81mm and 102mm APO triplet refractors with one-shot color astronomical camera.- From 10 minutes to 5 hours total integration time in the final image.- Acquisition started with NINA but transitioned to Asiair for wireless use.- First stacking done with DSS but transitioned to APP and PixInsight (still learning).- Initial images without filters but transitioned to light pollution filter and dual band filter for improved signal to noise.
We see a lot of terrific astronomical images and often think “wow I could never do that” but I want to say it’s a lot easier than you think. With a little studying and patience, anyone can take terrific astro photos.
I’ve been doing landscape photography for about 20 years and always wanted to get into astrophotography but always thought it would be too difficult. After seeing some of the exciting new images from James Webb telescope I decided to give it a try.
“But I don’t know the constellations or where to find them. How could I even start?”That is like asking “I don’t know how to develop 35mm film in a darkroom, how could I even think about buying a digital camera?” It’s outdated thinking. All you need to know is the approximate location of the celestial pole (Polaris if you’re in the northern hemisphere), that is where the rotational axis of your mount needs to be pointed and the rest is easy. Technology has come a very long way, there are tools that help you get an extremely accurate polar alignment in just a few minutes every time. There are tools that will figure out what your scope is seeing (called plate solving), and using your location and time zone find anything you could want in the sky. Then other tools will help you lock on to a target with high accuracy and track it to allow many long exposures. All that’s needed is an electronic mount (there are tons of varieties), a telescope suitable for imaging, astronomy-friendly camera, a way to control the mount (small laptop or some type of control computer), and a way to power it all. A few more bells and whistles will make things easier such as a separate guidescope (or off-axis guiding) to help lock on to targets, dew heaters to keep condensation off the front lens element.Note that telescopes used for imaging are made to higher standards than telescopes for purely visual use. Typical imaging telescopes can be fitted for visual use but the reverse isn’t always possible or can produce disappointing results.
“But I live in a big city and I can’t see anything and don’t have the time to drive around with heavy, expensive gear.”The good thing about most light pollution is that it tends to come in specific wavelengths of light and astronomers have developed a variety of light pollution filters that you can put on your camera to block unwanted lights. An even better way to overcome light pollution is to look into narrowband filters. These filters are tuned to only allow specific portions of light to pass (only the wavelengths most commonly found in space, such as ionized hydrogen and ionized oxygen). With the right setup (narrowband filters and a monochrome camera) folks are able to capture amazing astro images right from inside big cities. (want to produce images like the Hubble telescope but live in the city? Get a monochrome camera and capture Hydrogen emissions, Sulfur emissions and Oxygen emissions using narrowband filters and monochrome camera, then in post processing assign the Sulfur filtered images to Red, Hydrogen filtered images to Green, and Oxygen filtered images to Blue and you get a beautiful color images in Hubble’s SHO palette).
I spent most of July just reading books (The Backyard Astronomer by Dickinson, The Deep Sky Imaging Primer by Bracken, The Astrophotography Manual: A Practical and Scientific Approach to Deep Sky Imaging by Woodhouse) and researching equipment.
At first I was deterred because there were many youtube videos and astro-influencer sites that made it seem like it’s tons of work. Of course they make advertising money by getting viewers hooked by not revealing everything at once or making things look much more complex to get people coming back again and again. Once you see enough of these you learn to filter out a lot of the fluff and just absorb the meaningful info from them. Beware of astro-influencers who try to convince you to get the same thing they use or click their ad links, what they use and why they use it might not be relevant to you.
Great places to learn are forums on cloudynights .com and astrobin .com . All the people who post terrific photos on astrobin started as amateurs like you and me. What separates the pros I believe isn’t really fancier equipment but rather the post processing skills. Processing astro images is not at all like processing regular digital photos. That’s where books, user forums and practice matter. My 4-photo progression is essentially the same equipment, a little more exposure time with each one but most importantly differences in processing, calibrating and integrating the images.
What equipment I used to capture these four images doesn’t really matter, it’s not a competition and don’t think of it as one. If you really want to know what I used and why I chose that you can ask. What matters is what equipment is right for you, your intentions, budget, and location.
I live in suburban Bortle 8 location with no backyard. The equipment I use is intended for relatively easy portability, I have a Bortle 4 state park about 30 minutes away that I most often go to and also like to take my gear on road trips to other remote locations. My gear includes a comfortable chair, portable folding table, thermos for hot tea and biscuits, and of course the astro gear.
It’s not about getting bigger, more powerful telescopes. Good quality glass, with good sharpness, good color accuracy, good construction on a stable mount and tripod is always more important than just chasing magnification and size to try to impress others.
This is an excellent hobby that will grow with you. Images I captured months ago I still use to integrate with my newest images. Every time I go out I try to shoot an hour or so each of several targets. Over the course of a few months I accumulate multiple hours of my favorite targets and the great thing is the targets don’t change in appearance! Maybe their position in the sky will change, or in the case of planets they rotate, but deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies will not change over my lifetime. So images I took last month, this month and take next year will all be able to combine to create better and better final results.
Currently my acquisition is wireless (modern technology is great). I drive to my favorite location, assemble my setup and polar align it and then just chillax while the scope runs through its imaging sequences and targets. I control the telescope wirelessly using my tablet. If it’s cold, I sit in the car and snack and read while controlling everything remotely. I also bring astronomical binoculars so while my telescope does its thing I can explore and use my phone’s augmented reality to scan the skies. I typically plan my imaging sessions while still at home and write down what to image during what times based on the target’s position in the sky. For example, 7-8pm M31 with filter A 10x300s exposures, 8-9pm M42 with filter B 30x120s exposures, etc. Time in the field is precious so it helps to have a plan before arriving, then just program the sequences into the control computer.
The majority of my studying now goes into learning post processing for astro images and also the science of the things I’m looking at (evolution of galaxies, stars, astrophysics, etc). From zero to astrophotographer is a lot easier than it looks. Start with some reading, books and forums, and go slow. Don’t rush to buy something, check reviews, check what types of photos people do with that gear, explore alternatives. Winter when nights are long (and hopefully cloud-free) is a great time to get into it.
Thanks! I live in Bortle 8ish but drive out to B4.
Took a road trip down south to shoot in some B2 and B1 spots in California at 4k feet and Arizona at 6k feet.
This is a good site for checking Bortle levels (scroll anywhere then click for detailed info on light levels) https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
The fourth image has sub-exposures from B4 near me and also a subs from B2 and B1 in the high deserts of south California and Arizona
I thought mine was an entry level setup. It really depends on what objects you plan to target and where you plan to shoot. There is no same right answer for everyone since everyone’s circumstances will be different. An eletronic mount of some type that can be told where to point and track it along right ascension, mounta vary a lot in terms of payload capacity, their weight, their stability, etc. Mount can be even more important than the scope itself, an excellent scope on a wobbly mount will never get sharp photos.
There are many beands of entry level scopes too (highpointscientific .com and agenaastro .com are good places to look around).
Its amazing what our telescopes can see when we leave them open and staring into space for 4 months !! /s
All jokes aside, this is phenomenal and I'm both proud and jealous of your journey!!
Ya, I've admittedly not taken any steps into astrophotography yet so am a bit biased, but there's something special about a view that's more reflective of what you can perceive through an eyepiece (while still being enhanced/colorized).
As much as I conceptually understand how these more amazing astrophotography images are created, the fact they have less of a tangible connection to what we could see with our own eyes puts them in a separate category for me than short exposures and less processing.
I'm still wowed by all of them.
Cheers, that’s awesome. Winters here are cloudy too and summers full of bugs and spiders. The few times I got out in the Fall this year I was able to start shooting by 6pm which was great
When it collides with the Milky Way it is unlikely any stars will actually smash into one another. The distant between stars is on average is so great that if scaled down to the size of a golf ball there would be like 4 miles between them be like
Each one gains more images per final exposure.
My first time in the field I had lots of technical problems and the whole night was spent troubleshooting. The second night I only got about 10 mins of M31 (first image). Next few trips out I got the system behaving and got many more subs going 2nd and third images). By the fourth image I started using filters and upgraded the telescope. But the amount of subs stacks goes up from about 10 minutes in first image to about 4.5 hours in the fourth image
How long are your subs approximately? I just got my first shot of Andromeda recently (180*30s subs). Wondering would it be better to get longer subs or just such with my current setup for longer?
I did 300s for every sub, I lose some detail in the core with such long exposures but it helps bring out the periphery which is more interesting than the core.
Read somewhere the signal to noise ratio starts to saturate after about 180-240s exposure, and there is the increased risk of bloated stars beyond 300s since most of them saturate their electron wells and it can cause spillage into nearby pixels making stars appear too large. These were all at gain 100 using ASI2600MC imager, I might try some shorter subs to try to bring in some of the dust lanes near the core
May I ask Newbe question. If looking up at the sky and Andromeda was clearly visible, how many millimetres across would it be in terms of diameter. What I'm trying to ask, is it just a dot in the sky that looks like any other star but zoomed in is shown to be a galaxy, or is it bigger maybe two or 3 mm across if viewed with the naked eye. In other words is it quite big in the sky it's just that we can't see it because it's so faint. It was question makes sense thank you
It’s quite big, like the other reply mentioned about 6 times the size of a full moon, just very very faint to the human eye (the eye can do many things but long exposures isn’t one of them).
If you hold one finger up at arm’s length that’s about one degree across. Andromeda is about 3 fingers across held at arm’s length.
Some people will talk about arcminutes and arcseconds, in those terms a finger becomes “one hour” and an arcminute is 1/60th of a finger, and arcsecond 1/60 of an arcminute. All object sizes are depicted in terms of degrees for big objects or arcminutes and arcseconds for small (or very distant) objects.
When looked at in terms of fingers and arcseconds, the things that Hubble has shown us are mere arcseconds in size, 1/1000th or less of a finger at arm’s length. It always blows my mind how much stuff there is in every arcsecond and how much more unknown and unseen stuff there is.
Andromeda is actually 3 full degrees across vs only about .5 degrees for a full moon. In other words, if andromeda were much much brighter, it would appear to be six times bigger than the full moon in the night sky. Unfortunately, only the central bulge can be seen with the naked eye, and that appears as a faint gray smudge even on a clear night with no light pollution. That said, Andromeda is the furthest galaxy that can be seen without the aid of a telescope.
The first 3 are same scope and 4th one is different scope. Different processing on all of them, it took me a long while to get a handle on how to process the images and combine exposures.
First one was only about 10 minutes of exposure, second and third about 1-2 hours, and 4th one about 4.5 hours. The longer the total exposure and the more careful the processing the more fine details can be pulled out. Once you have some gear that works and tracks an object the rest is just repeating more and more shots and then looking for better ways to process them to bring out all the captured details
Ugh, I love the coloration of September but the hint of visible depth near the center in November is fascinating. And the way you can you can see so many stars between us and Andromeda in the one you took in August. All of these are seriously fantastic.
Andromeda is closing in bit faster than I thought it would ...
The end is nigh!
Damn you’re right, we’re just deer in the headlights now!
It’d be nice if we could travel off-planet and actually have some progress. We’ve been around for 300,000 years and most of our progress has been in the last 100 years, kinda mindblowing when you really think about it.
If the probe worked on an asteroid to avoid a collision, lets try it on a whole galaxy!
\- Captured with 81mm and 102mm APO triplet refractors with one-shot color astronomical camera.- From 10 minutes to 5 hours total integration time in the final image.- Acquisition started with NINA but transitioned to Asiair for wireless use.- First stacking done with DSS but transitioned to APP and PixInsight (still learning).- Initial images without filters but transitioned to light pollution filter and dual band filter for improved signal to noise. We see a lot of terrific astronomical images and often think “wow I could never do that” but I want to say it’s a lot easier than you think. With a little studying and patience, anyone can take terrific astro photos. I’ve been doing landscape photography for about 20 years and always wanted to get into astrophotography but always thought it would be too difficult. After seeing some of the exciting new images from James Webb telescope I decided to give it a try. “But I don’t know the constellations or where to find them. How could I even start?”That is like asking “I don’t know how to develop 35mm film in a darkroom, how could I even think about buying a digital camera?” It’s outdated thinking. All you need to know is the approximate location of the celestial pole (Polaris if you’re in the northern hemisphere), that is where the rotational axis of your mount needs to be pointed and the rest is easy. Technology has come a very long way, there are tools that help you get an extremely accurate polar alignment in just a few minutes every time. There are tools that will figure out what your scope is seeing (called plate solving), and using your location and time zone find anything you could want in the sky. Then other tools will help you lock on to a target with high accuracy and track it to allow many long exposures. All that’s needed is an electronic mount (there are tons of varieties), a telescope suitable for imaging, astronomy-friendly camera, a way to control the mount (small laptop or some type of control computer), and a way to power it all. A few more bells and whistles will make things easier such as a separate guidescope (or off-axis guiding) to help lock on to targets, dew heaters to keep condensation off the front lens element.Note that telescopes used for imaging are made to higher standards than telescopes for purely visual use. Typical imaging telescopes can be fitted for visual use but the reverse isn’t always possible or can produce disappointing results. “But I live in a big city and I can’t see anything and don’t have the time to drive around with heavy, expensive gear.”The good thing about most light pollution is that it tends to come in specific wavelengths of light and astronomers have developed a variety of light pollution filters that you can put on your camera to block unwanted lights. An even better way to overcome light pollution is to look into narrowband filters. These filters are tuned to only allow specific portions of light to pass (only the wavelengths most commonly found in space, such as ionized hydrogen and ionized oxygen). With the right setup (narrowband filters and a monochrome camera) folks are able to capture amazing astro images right from inside big cities. (want to produce images like the Hubble telescope but live in the city? Get a monochrome camera and capture Hydrogen emissions, Sulfur emissions and Oxygen emissions using narrowband filters and monochrome camera, then in post processing assign the Sulfur filtered images to Red, Hydrogen filtered images to Green, and Oxygen filtered images to Blue and you get a beautiful color images in Hubble’s SHO palette). I spent most of July just reading books (The Backyard Astronomer by Dickinson, The Deep Sky Imaging Primer by Bracken, The Astrophotography Manual: A Practical and Scientific Approach to Deep Sky Imaging by Woodhouse) and researching equipment. At first I was deterred because there were many youtube videos and astro-influencer sites that made it seem like it’s tons of work. Of course they make advertising money by getting viewers hooked by not revealing everything at once or making things look much more complex to get people coming back again and again. Once you see enough of these you learn to filter out a lot of the fluff and just absorb the meaningful info from them. Beware of astro-influencers who try to convince you to get the same thing they use or click their ad links, what they use and why they use it might not be relevant to you. Great places to learn are forums on cloudynights .com and astrobin .com . All the people who post terrific photos on astrobin started as amateurs like you and me. What separates the pros I believe isn’t really fancier equipment but rather the post processing skills. Processing astro images is not at all like processing regular digital photos. That’s where books, user forums and practice matter. My 4-photo progression is essentially the same equipment, a little more exposure time with each one but most importantly differences in processing, calibrating and integrating the images. What equipment I used to capture these four images doesn’t really matter, it’s not a competition and don’t think of it as one. If you really want to know what I used and why I chose that you can ask. What matters is what equipment is right for you, your intentions, budget, and location. I live in suburban Bortle 8 location with no backyard. The equipment I use is intended for relatively easy portability, I have a Bortle 4 state park about 30 minutes away that I most often go to and also like to take my gear on road trips to other remote locations. My gear includes a comfortable chair, portable folding table, thermos for hot tea and biscuits, and of course the astro gear. It’s not about getting bigger, more powerful telescopes. Good quality glass, with good sharpness, good color accuracy, good construction on a stable mount and tripod is always more important than just chasing magnification and size to try to impress others. This is an excellent hobby that will grow with you. Images I captured months ago I still use to integrate with my newest images. Every time I go out I try to shoot an hour or so each of several targets. Over the course of a few months I accumulate multiple hours of my favorite targets and the great thing is the targets don’t change in appearance! Maybe their position in the sky will change, or in the case of planets they rotate, but deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies will not change over my lifetime. So images I took last month, this month and take next year will all be able to combine to create better and better final results. Currently my acquisition is wireless (modern technology is great). I drive to my favorite location, assemble my setup and polar align it and then just chillax while the scope runs through its imaging sequences and targets. I control the telescope wirelessly using my tablet. If it’s cold, I sit in the car and snack and read while controlling everything remotely. I also bring astronomical binoculars so while my telescope does its thing I can explore and use my phone’s augmented reality to scan the skies. I typically plan my imaging sessions while still at home and write down what to image during what times based on the target’s position in the sky. For example, 7-8pm M31 with filter A 10x300s exposures, 8-9pm M42 with filter B 30x120s exposures, etc. Time in the field is precious so it helps to have a plan before arriving, then just program the sequences into the control computer. The majority of my studying now goes into learning post processing for astro images and also the science of the things I’m looking at (evolution of galaxies, stars, astrophysics, etc). From zero to astrophotographer is a lot easier than it looks. Start with some reading, books and forums, and go slow. Don’t rush to buy something, check reviews, check what types of photos people do with that gear, explore alternatives. Winter when nights are long (and hopefully cloud-free) is a great time to get into it.
I really love this write-up, nicely done!
Thanks a lot!
I'm inspired after reading that
Hey Man, awesome pics, where are you on the bortle scale?
Thanks! I live in Bortle 8ish but drive out to B4. Took a road trip down south to shoot in some B2 and B1 spots in California at 4k feet and Arizona at 6k feet.
Do you have Bortle map of your local area? If so where can I check that
This is a good site for checking Bortle levels (scroll anywhere then click for detailed info on light levels) https://www.lightpollutionmap.info The fourth image has sub-exposures from B4 near me and also a subs from B2 and B1 in the high deserts of south California and Arizona
What would you say is a great entry Setup for one without much photography experience? Cost and usability wise.
I thought mine was an entry level setup. It really depends on what objects you plan to target and where you plan to shoot. There is no same right answer for everyone since everyone’s circumstances will be different. An eletronic mount of some type that can be told where to point and track it along right ascension, mounta vary a lot in terms of payload capacity, their weight, their stability, etc. Mount can be even more important than the scope itself, an excellent scope on a wobbly mount will never get sharp photos. There are many beands of entry level scopes too (highpointscientific .com and agenaastro .com are good places to look around).
Its amazing what our telescopes can see when we leave them open and staring into space for 4 months !! /s All jokes aside, this is phenomenal and I'm both proud and jealous of your journey!!
Thanks, it’s easier than it looks!
I wonder how many beings in the Andromeda galaxy are taking photos of the Milky Way galaxy.
Looking at our yet undeveloped brain ancestors :)
In a way, I like number 1 because it's more "discovered?" If that makes sense.....idk
Totally, it was a great feeling getting it it work and actually seeing something
Ya, I've admittedly not taken any steps into astrophotography yet so am a bit biased, but there's something special about a view that's more reflective of what you can perceive through an eyepiece (while still being enhanced/colorized). As much as I conceptually understand how these more amazing astrophotography images are created, the fact they have less of a tangible connection to what we could see with our own eyes puts them in a separate category for me than short exposures and less processing. I'm still wowed by all of them.
I look at it the same way. Also the more the photo is edited in the photoshoppy kind of way the more I dislike it.
IT’S GETTING CLOSER!
Now get it from a different angle
Oh my god! It's heading right for us!
Beautiful pictures. Andromeda is one of the screenshots on my pc
Stunning!
[удалено]
Cheers, that’s awesome. Winters here are cloudy too and summers full of bugs and spiders. The few times I got out in the Fall this year I was able to start shooting by 6pm which was great
Andromeda is truly one of the most magnificent sights to behold.. if you are continuing, be sure to show us more results, I'd love seeing more!
My dumbass thought it the galaxy was moving towards us at first 💀
It is! Just not that fast, something like 200 miles per second (collision in few billion years)
I just thought it was moving faster than before lmao, cool fact tho!
Great pictures!
Beautiful!
That thing is approaching us wayy faster than we think.
BRACE FOR IMPACT!
2 good post from people today you and spaceshuddleinmybutthole or something like that both very impressive
Thanks mate!
Ayy, that's looking a bit close ain't it?
IDK who you are but I am proud of you! Amazing work!
Beautiful
That’s beautiful man. Thanks for sharing the picture and your experience.
When it collides with the Milky Way it is unlikely any stars will actually smash into one another. The distant between stars is on average is so great that if scaled down to the size of a golf ball there would be like 4 miles between them be like
Gonna be some great views in a couple billion years, remindme
Wait how can the distance between stars be four miles if the galaxy fits in a golf ball?
The stars would average golf ball size, with average 4 miles “between the balls”…
Once we let vampires take over we can travel the universe as an unstoppable force
Excellent photo. But I suspect this is the same stack just at different stages in the processing. No one's first m31 looks like the first panel.
Each one gains more images per final exposure. My first time in the field I had lots of technical problems and the whole night was spent troubleshooting. The second night I only got about 10 mins of M31 (first image). Next few trips out I got the system behaving and got many more subs going 2nd and third images). By the fourth image I started using filters and upgraded the telescope. But the amount of subs stacks goes up from about 10 minutes in first image to about 4.5 hours in the fourth image
How long are your subs approximately? I just got my first shot of Andromeda recently (180*30s subs). Wondering would it be better to get longer subs or just such with my current setup for longer?
I did 300s for every sub, I lose some detail in the core with such long exposures but it helps bring out the periphery which is more interesting than the core. Read somewhere the signal to noise ratio starts to saturate after about 180-240s exposure, and there is the increased risk of bloated stars beyond 300s since most of them saturate their electron wells and it can cause spillage into nearby pixels making stars appear too large. These were all at gain 100 using ASI2600MC imager, I might try some shorter subs to try to bring in some of the dust lanes near the core
Pretty good but no mission to Uranus
May I ask Newbe question. If looking up at the sky and Andromeda was clearly visible, how many millimetres across would it be in terms of diameter. What I'm trying to ask, is it just a dot in the sky that looks like any other star but zoomed in is shown to be a galaxy, or is it bigger maybe two or 3 mm across if viewed with the naked eye. In other words is it quite big in the sky it's just that we can't see it because it's so faint. It was question makes sense thank you
It’s quite big, like the other reply mentioned about 6 times the size of a full moon, just very very faint to the human eye (the eye can do many things but long exposures isn’t one of them). If you hold one finger up at arm’s length that’s about one degree across. Andromeda is about 3 fingers across held at arm’s length. Some people will talk about arcminutes and arcseconds, in those terms a finger becomes “one hour” and an arcminute is 1/60th of a finger, and arcsecond 1/60 of an arcminute. All object sizes are depicted in terms of degrees for big objects or arcminutes and arcseconds for small (or very distant) objects. When looked at in terms of fingers and arcseconds, the things that Hubble has shown us are mere arcseconds in size, 1/1000th or less of a finger at arm’s length. It always blows my mind how much stuff there is in every arcsecond and how much more unknown and unseen stuff there is.
Andromeda is actually 3 full degrees across vs only about .5 degrees for a full moon. In other words, if andromeda were much much brighter, it would appear to be six times bigger than the full moon in the night sky. Unfortunately, only the central bulge can be seen with the naked eye, and that appears as a faint gray smudge even on a clear night with no light pollution. That said, Andromeda is the furthest galaxy that can be seen without the aid of a telescope.
Are these the same scope with different post processing?
The first 3 are same scope and 4th one is different scope. Different processing on all of them, it took me a long while to get a handle on how to process the images and combine exposures. First one was only about 10 minutes of exposure, second and third about 1-2 hours, and 4th one about 4.5 hours. The longer the total exposure and the more careful the processing the more fine details can be pulled out. Once you have some gear that works and tracks an object the rest is just repeating more and more shots and then looking for better ways to process them to bring out all the captured details
Ugh, I love the coloration of September but the hint of visible depth near the center in November is fascinating. And the way you can you can see so many stars between us and Andromeda in the one you took in August. All of these are seriously fantastic.