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!
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.
Astrophotography refers to images of astronomical objects or phenomena exclusively.
~~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.
Images must be an accurate representation of a real astronomical object.
Image posts can only be images that you have captured and processed yourself, or discussion about capturing and/or processing your own images.
Images acquired from public sources, professional observatories, or other professional services are not allowed.
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.
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)
Questions are welcome here for the time being.
Links to blogs, articles or external websites should be interesting and promote discussion about amateur astrophotography.
If your post is removed, try reposting with a different title. Don't hesitate to message the mods if you still have questions!
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.
This includes the telescope, mount, camera, accessories, and any other pieces of equipment you used to capture the image.
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.
Hope this low effort post is accepted, I just wanted to share my first image when I started.
There was no telescope or tracker used, just a smartphone leaned against my wallet.
Images:
Editing:
I take it there was heavy editing after the initial capture - not least because of the constellation lines.
Yes, I used Siril for stacking/ stretching, Starnett++ for star removal (to edit the glimpse of orion nebula a little better), GraXpert for gradient and noise, and BlurXTerminator for deconvolution. Final editing was done in Photoshop.
So heavy editing indeed..
At this point… low effort?
I mean, I literally just put the phone on the roof of my car and leaned it against my wallet. It was just an experiment because I wanted to know whats possible with just a phone
With those tools you did not even need to take a picture.
While there are tools like generative AI models to invent images like this, in astrophotography it is very important only to use tools which don‘t invent any new information.
The only tool which is debatable is denoising with AI, as it really creates information learned from other images. But even here there are ways to prevent this.
Imo at the end we want to capture whats really out there, not what there could be
To my mind, a lot of astrophotography seems to be hooking a camera up to a telescope, making sure it's focused right, and taking a buncha pictures. Of course proper maintenance of equipment plays a massive role, but my understanding is that a lot of the effort comes from knowing how to post-process
Yes processing the image plays a huge role.
But at the end you can only work with the information provided by your equipment as there are physical limitations on what one can capture.
To me the most interesting part of this hobby is to learn what you physically really have to do to get good images. Physics not only plays a role on understanding what we see in these images but also on how to make them.
Truly fascinating!