c/astronomy-photos

6 years of stacking Orion shots and I still mess up flats

Used to just take flats quick at twilight and call it good. Then last year I started doing them at dawn with a light panel, way more consistent. Anyone else find their darks or bias frames matter more now than when they started?

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blair_taylor32•5d ago

TIL the Hubble Deep Field photo has galaxies that are 13 billion years old

I was just reading about the Hubble Deep Field image from 1995 and it blew my mind. That tiny patch of sky, about the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, contains over 3,000 galaxies. And some of those galaxies are over 13 billion light-years away, meaning we're seeing them as they were shortly after the Big Bang. I found this on NASA's website last night while looking up how they processed the colors. It's crazy to think that one photo changed our view of the universe so much. Has anyone else looked into the newer Webb Deep Field and compared them?

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wesleyb20•7d ago

Finally got a solid moon shot after swapping my lens

I spent a week deciding between a 70-200mm and a 150-600mm for lunar photos, and I went with the bigger one. First clear night last Tuesday I captured a crater detail I never saw before with my old kit lens. Has anyone else had a lucky break after switching gear?

c/astronomy-photos

6 years of stacking Orion shots and I still mess up flats

TIL the Hubble Deep Field photo has galaxies that are 13 billion years old

Finally got a solid moon shot after swapping my lens

Stacking multiple exposures of the Orion Nebula finally made the clouds pop for me

Paid $600 for a motorized star tracker and it either saved my astrophotography or ruined it

Noticed a huge difference in my nebula shots after I started stacking 30 second exposures instead of 60

That one time I spent 45 minutes trying to align my telescope only to find out the battery was dead

Talking to an amateur astrophotographer in Portland changed how I look at my phone pics

The night I got 14 sharp moon shots then lost everything to a single cloud bank

Hot take: stacking photos is overused for amateur shots

I finally saw how big the Whirlpool Galaxy really is compared to our moon

Thought stacking photos was cheating until a guy at a star party changed my mind

The thing that guy said about Andromeda stuck with me for years

Stacks of star trail photos that are clearly fake are driving me nuts

Had to choose between a star tracker and a telephoto lens upgrade for night shots

Spent $60 on a light pollution filter and it saved my Milky Way shots

I used to hate widefield shots until I saw one in person

TIL my telescope had the lens cap on for 3 years of moon photos

Caught myself mislabeling Andromeda photos for weeks before I noticed

Just realized why I kept losing stars in my photos

Hot take: stacking multiple short exposures beats one long exposure for deep sky photos

Is that a planet or a star? I keep seeing people mislabel them in photos

Had a weird night at Foothills Observatory where the seeing was perfect but my camera kept fogging up

Stopped a guy at Kitt Peak who was taking phone pics through a telescope eyepiece

Vent: I was using too much exposure in my nebula shots for years