Astrophotography
Welcome to !astrophotography!
We are Lemmy's dedicated astrophotography community!
If you want to see or post pictures of space taken by amateurs using amateur level equipment, this is the place for you!
If you want to learn more about taking astro photos, check out our wiki or our discord!
Please read the rules before you post! It is your responsibility to be aware of current rules. Failure to be aware of current rules may result in your post being removed without warning at moderator discretion.
Rules
- I | Real space images only.
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Astrophotography refers to images of astronomical objects or phenomena exclusively.
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~~Images that show objects or people below the Kármán Line (100km) will be removed.~~ We won't be enforcing this rule for now, but as the community grows eventually we will split and have a separate space for just landscape astro.
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Images must be an accurate representation of a real astronomical object.
- II | Original and Amateur Content Only
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Image posts can only be images that you have captured and processed yourself, or discussion about capturing and/or processing your own images.
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Images acquired from public sources, professional observatories, or other professional services are not allowed.
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If you have done a drastic alteration or reprocessing of a prior submission, you may repost your edit - but only after a minimum of one week has passed.
- III | Post Types
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Image posts are to link directly to the image, not to landing pages, personal galleries, blogs, or professional sites. Link to these in the comments. (AstroBin and Imgur, are allowed)
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Questions are welcome here for the time being.
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Links to blogs, articles or external websites should be interesting and promote discussion about amateur astrophotography.
- IV | Titles
- All image posts should just include include the name of the object being photographed. Extra info such as equipment, it being your first image, or other information should go in a comment along with your acquisition info. Please see this page for more details.
If your post is removed, try reposting with a different title. Don't hesitate to message the mods if you still have questions!
- V | Acquisition and Processing Information
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All submitted images must include acquisition and processing details as a top-level comment. All posts without this information may be given a warning, and if not updated will be removed.
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This includes the telescope, mount, camera, accessories, and any other pieces of equipment you used to capture the image.
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You must also include processing details, i.e. the programs you used and a general rundown of the workflow/processes you used within those programs. “Processed in Photoshop” is not enough.
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These are great, I hadn't given much thought to the atmospheric conditions besides the obvious clouds. I found my city's astronomy club that I plan to go and meet with the next time the weather permits a star party.
Can a 300mm lens get images like all the common nebulae photos (I have a full frame so it's 300mm even)? I know some are further away but I'm sure you understand the idea I'm going for. I'm less interested in planets and I believe those require crazy long focal lengths.
Further away doesn't always mean smaller. You're going to want to be more concerned with angular size and magnitude (brightness). With 300mm I'm pretty sure you should be able to resolve most of not all Messier objects (assuming you're in the northern hemisphere). They definitely aren't going to dominate the frame but you should be able to tell they're there.
*edit: just looked at the Messier catalog and some of them probably are going to be hard to resolve without at least a small telescope. But there are a lot of options that should be fine at 300mm.
I'll start my journey with Messier then. Sounds like a great place to focus on. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction
I appreciate all the tips. I'll definitely pay more attention to those key words (angular size and magnitute) when I come across them. I am in the northern hemisphere
Just to give an idea of how you don't need really expensive stuff to get into the hobby this is an early shot I did of M42 (Orion Nebula). Nikon D3200 200mm f5.6 ISO1600. It's a set of 200 images (light frames) stacked using Deep Sky Stacker with 30 bias, 60 dark, and 0 flat frames. This was shot in my bark yard, from a cheap aluminum tripod with no tracker and a lot of sodium street lights in the area so the seeing conditions were fairly poor. https://i.imgur.com/OboEruo.jpeg
Huge recommendation for taking notes. Especial of any camera settings that don't get captured in metadata. And if you not a data hoarder and don't keep all your frames after processing then notes on how may you took of each, etc. Weather / seeing conditions. That way you can go back and see what works and what doesn't work for you.
Also a good rule of thumb you can always subtract data and make your shots darker as long as they're not blown out, but you can't recover lost data if your shots are too dark. So take photos that are as bright as you can without blowing them out and without having a ton of noise from super high ISO. Stacker software helps with the noise but it's still something that'll probably require trial and error.
Imgur provides an error saying it's over capacity. I'll check back later, I'm really interested to see your photo. How long were each of your exposures?
Good advice, I'll definitely keep a notepad in my bag.
Alright, I'll keep my histogram as close to maxing the bright side without clipping.
On average, how many gigs of storage do you use to complete one photo? Also what's the size of the final image?