Astrophotography

[z3r0]

Is any photographer here interested in taking photos of the stars/moon/planets/etc.?

Now that I've upgraded to DSLR, I was thinking about giving it a shot. The information available on the web is vast but relatively confusing. Looking for personal experiences and whatnot, what works, what doesn't...best equipment budget-wise, etc.

 

[voyagerfan99]

There's a few posts in the "Post your Photography" thread.

First shot at stacking photos. This is a total of 6 photos, with an exposure time of 2m 04s.

Cool fall evening by Geoff Johnson., on Flickr

Here's a stack of 14 photos for a total of 5 minutes:

Milky Way by Geoff Johnson., on Flickr

Clear skies made for some good astrophotography tonight. I'm still new to it and this is my first try. First you can see Orion, and below it you can see the Seven Sisters.

Basically you just get to a really dark area, find a spot to focus on, and take a long exposure with a large aperture.

 

[G80FTW]

I chose my D3100 specifically for astrophotography. While its obviously not a top of the line DSLR, from what I read it performed much better in low light conditions compared to its higher end models that had the same sensor but higher pixel count.

Im still using the standard 18-55mm lens it came with, but depending on what kind of pictures you are looking at getting you most likely would want a wide lens with a low F stop to get the most light in as possible in a shorter amount of time. Because the longer the shutter speed, you start to get star trails.

Its not a bad idea to also invest about $200 or so into a decent telescope that has a motorized tripod to eliminate star trails and you will also be able to mount the camera to the telescope itself. I still need to get one, my $50 celestron is far from ideal but I have a million hobbies and its hard to dump money into everything.