c/astronomy-photos

TIL that stacking multiple filters on a telescope photo is not always better

I was at a local star party last summer and this older guy with a beat-up scope showed me his shot of Orion Nebula with zero filters - just raw frames stacked. He said everyone obsesses over H-alpha and OIII filters but a straight RGB capture can look just as clean. Anyone else think the filter hype is overblown for amateurs?

Bought a used Meade telescope for $300 off Facebook Marketplace... biggest regret of my life lol

Had a guy at the observatory open house tell me my stacked photo was 'cheating' because I used software

He stood there for ten minutes lecturing me about how real astrophotographers do it on film while I just stood there holding my Nikon and a flask of coffee wondering if he knew the Hubble Space Telescope uses digital processing too, has anyone else run into these analog purists at public events?

Finally got a clear shot of the Orion Nebula after 3 years of trying

I used to just point my old telescope at Orion and snap whatever came out, usually a blurry smudge. Then last month I finally bought a star tracker mount, and it changed everything. My first 30 second exposure with the tracker actually showed the dust lanes and the Trapezium cluster, something I'd only seen in other people's photos. What was the one piece of gear that made the biggest difference in your own astrophotography?

Stacking 3 hours of data on the Orion Nebula actually ruined my shot

Everyone keeps saying more integration time is always better, but last Tuesday I tried stacking 3 hours of 30-second subs on M42. The core got so blown out I couldn't recover any detail in the trapezium region, even with HDR composition tools in DSS. I went back and combined just 45 minutes of my best 10-second frames and it looked way cleaner. Has anyone else found a hard limit on exposure time for bright DSOs?

Finally caught that one detail in Orion photos that everyone seems to miss

It took me six months of comparing my stacked images to the pros before I realized they were all adjusting the hydrogen-alpha channel separately to bring out the Barnard's Loop arc, and now my widefield shots actually look like the nebula is glowing instead of just being a flat red smear - has anyone else found that one processing trick that made everything click for them?

Tried stacking my 11th photo of M31 and the noise got worse instead of better

I added 30 minutes more exposure thinking it'd clean up the background, but my stack actually ended up with weird streaky artifacts. Anyone know what causes that with deep sky images?

Chatted with an old guy at a star party in Tucson who changed how I see nebula photos

He said most of those colorful deep space shots are false color maps, not what you'd actually see. Apparently the Hubble palette assigns different gases to specific colors to highlight structure, not reality. Anyone know a good tutorial for learning how to process my own images with that technique?

Had to pick between a cheap telescope and a decent pair of binoculars for nebula shots last weekend

I went with the binoculars cause the scope was $75 and looked like a toy, lol. Way happier with the detailed shots of Orion, why didn't anyone warn me how bad cheap scopes are for astrophotography?

Had the worst week for capturing the moon - clouds every single night

Last Wednesday through Saturday, I tried four nights in a row to get a clean shot of the waxing gibbous moon from my backyard in Tucson. Every time I set up my telescope and camera, the clouds rolled in within 20 minutes like they were waiting for me. One night I even waited until 2 AM and still got nothing but haze. Anyone else have a week where the weather just refused to cooperate with your photo plans?

I used to laugh at people who spent $2k on a telescope mount

Last month I tried to get a clean shot of the Andromeda Galaxy with my DSLR on a $100 tripod. Every 30 second exposure looked like a blurry mess because of the wind and my shaky setup. My buddy let me borrow his Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer and I got 50 usable frames with zero trailing. Now I get why serious astrophotographers dump so much money into stability gear. Anyone else have a hardware upgrade that completely changed your results?

Hit 100 stacked photos on the moon and saw craters I never noticed before

I always stopped at around 30 frames for lunar shots because I thought more was overkill. But last week I stacked 100 frames from my backyard scope and suddenly the detail on the terminator line was insane. Has anyone else noticed a big jump after a certain number of frames?

Stacking 100 frames vs my usual 30 made a huge difference on the Orion Nebula

I was getting frustrated with the noise in my shots using just 30 light frames. Tried stacking 100 raw frames from my last session and the detail in the dust lanes popped way more. Has anyone else noticed a big jump going past 50 frames?

Noticed something odd in a photo from last month

I was looking at a photo I took back in March of the Orion Nebula. The first time I processed it three years ago, the colors came out way different. Last month I reprocessed the same raw data using newer software and it looked much cleaner. Has anyone else gone back to old photos and seen a big improvement just from better tools?

Shoutout to the week of perfect transparency at Mauna Kea last March

I was up on Mauna Kea for a run with my 12 inch Dobsonian during the first week of March 2024. Every single night had seeing under 0.8 arcseconds and zero clouds for five nights straight. I managed to capture the North America Nebula in Ha with detail I've never seen before, even on expensive setups. The ranger said it was the best week they'd had in three years. Has anyone else gotten lucky with a stretch of weather like that?

Just crossed 10,000 photos in my deep space collection

Last night I hit 10,000 raw frames of deep space objects from my backyard setup. That's three years of shooting every clear night I could get. Most of them are garbage - clouds, tracking errors, or just plain bad focus. But it still felt like a big number to see on my hard drive. I'm curious how many total frames other people here have stacked up before they felt like they had a solid set of keepers. Does anyone else track their total shots like that?

Seeing a lot of moon photos with the wrong colors lately

I keep scrolling past pictures where people cranked the saturation way up and the moon looks like a orange ball. The moon does have some color variation from iron and basalt but it's subtle not neon. I spent a night last week comparing my own stacked shots against some of these overly processed ones and the difference is huge. A little tweak in curves is fine but if your moon looks like a pumpkin something got pushed too far. Anyone else notice this trend getting worse?

Tried capturing a comet last weekend and spent 45 minutes fighting a tripod that slowly sank into muddy ground

I was out at this field near Estacada at 2 AM, got everything set up perfectly, only to realize my camera had been pointing at the ground for the last 20 minutes because the leg just kept sinking into the mud and I wasted the whole window, has anyone else dealt with soft ground ruining a long exposure shot?

Blew $60 on a star tracker for my phone camera and it's basically useless

I bought a cheap star tracker off Amazon last month thinking it would let me get those long exposure shots of the Milky Way with my iPhone. Turns out the app barely connects and the motor makes this clicking sound that blurs every frame anyway lol. The tracker itself was $60 and now it just sits in my drawer collecting dust. Anyone have a budget setup that actually works for phone photography?

The feedback that made me stop over-processing my moon shots

Someone in a Facebook group told me my stacked lunar images looked 'like a video game' and it stung at first. I was doing 500 frames with heavy sharpening and they said to try just 50 frames with minimal tweaks. Now my shots look more natural and I actually get more likes and comments, what's your take on keeping it real vs going for that super crisp look?

A buddy at the truck stop changed how I look at nebula photos

I was parked at a Flying J outside Tulsa last week, scrolling through Hubble pics on my phone, and this older guy saw my screen and just goes "you know most of those colors are fake right?" I got defensive at first cause I love those bright orange and blue shots. But he sat down and explained how they map different gases to colors we can see, and that the raw data is mostly in grayscale. For some reason that hit different coming from a random trucker than when I read it online. Now I'm actually more interested in the black and white versions. Does anyone know a good site for unprocessed space photos?

Hit 10,000 cumulative hours looking through my telescope last night and it got me thinking...

Some people say you need that many hours to really see anything meaningful, but I feel like I spotted more cool stuff in my first 100 hours than in the last 9,900. Is it about the quantity of looking or the quality of what you're looking at?

Just realized I was stacking my astrophotos wrong for 6 months

I kept getting blurry nebula shots and thought it was my tracking. A guy in a forum asked if I was dithering between subs, and I had no idea what he meant. Has anyone else missed that step and wondered why their details looked muddy?

Spent 20 minutes at a dark sky park in Montana watching tourists ruin their own photos

I was at Glacier National Park last month and noticed about 15 people using their phone flashlights to illuminate their telescopes and cameras while taking long exposures. Has anyone else dealt with folks just not understanding that white light kills night vision and ruins the shot for everyone nearby?

Why does nobody mention how many deep-sky objects you can actually see from a backyard?

I hit 85 tracked objects last night with just an 8-inch Dobsonian from my driveway in Phoenix and now I'm wondering how many I've been missing for the last two years just because I didn't aim higher in the sky.