It was taken with a Canon 6D + Tamron 600mm lens on a star adventurer tracker with some active guiding via a guidescope camera. Pretty basic setup for astrophotography :)

    • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      1 year ago

      Thanks!

      I had a camera, a telephoto lens and a tripod, got some initial results and started looking into improvements :)

      The astrophotography reddit was a great place to learn as well. Not sure if there’s still any life there or if it’s gone the way of most of Reddit…

      • apigban@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        1 year ago

        It seems to be an expensive hobby based on my initial searches in amazon. high barrier to entry but I think I can make it work in 2 years.

        I do self hosting/de-googling/homelab but my daughter is too young to be involved in it, I think astrophotography would be a good thing for us.

        I fell in love with the thought of seeing things beyond, my daughter loves learning about satellites and space trash (I’m not sure why exactly).

        Thank you!

        • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, it can be pretty expensive. Some tips:

          • figure out if you want a photography kit you can also use for astrophotography or something more dedicated to astrophotography like a telescope you can put a camera in.
          • camera equipment is a lot cheaper used.
          • A lot of deep space objects are most visible in infrared, a camera without IR filter can capture this but wont be much use for anything else.
          • the old astrophotography reddit is a great place to learn about equipment tradeoffs as all photos are posted with equipment details. Makes it easier to learn what you can realistically capture and what requires 10x your budget.
    • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
      11·
      1 year ago

      Feel free to use it. I took it just before covid, I’ve had it as my lock screen image since then :)

  • yggdar
    3·
    1 year ago

    Wow, that’s amazing! Did you need to something weird to get that result? I have been considering getting a 600mm lens for a while now, is that really all it takes to get these kinds of results?

    • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      1 year ago

      Two things help a lot:

      • Tracking, either with a proper telescope mount or as I did, a star adventurer. You align it using the pole star, then it rotates the same speed as earth, counteracting the rotation so the sky stays in the same location relative to your camera.
      • Stacking, even with tracking I typically dont get longer than 1-3min exposures. So instead take multiple and stack the images in software. This image is 14x 100s exposures.

      But, even without any of those, I’ve taken images of the Orion Nebulae with just a tripod. It will be a lot blurrier and noisier and generally worse, but its pretty cool to see it show up anyway.

      • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
        9·
        1 year ago

        Here’s my first picture of this Nebula, it’s just a 400mm lens and a tripod. One 2.5min exposure.

      • yggdar
        2·
        1 year ago

        Thank you! That helps a lot to make sense of things!

    • ludw@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      It depends a bit on what equipment you have, but at least with my gear I don’t see much even on individual 100s exposures until I post process to bring out what was captured.

  • Raildrake@vlemmy.net
    1·
    1 year ago

    Mind blowing!

    I’ve been thinking of getting a telescope but I’m afraid I’d not be able to use it outside of taking trips out of the city, for the light pollution.

  • jd3@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m gonna screenshot it and share on Fakebook.

    Pleasure to be back on the old school style web!