c/astronomy-photos

My tracking mount battery died during a 3-hour Orion shoot

I set up my iOptron SkyGuider Pro last Tuesday night out in the desert near Joshua Tree. About 45 minutes into a long exposure sequence on Orion, the whole thing just stopped. The battery pack indicator had shown green but it gave out anyway. I packed up early and drove home frustrated. Has anyone else had a mount battery fail without warning like that?

Tried to save $40 on a used telescope mount and now I'm out $150

Bought a Sky-Watcher EQ5 off Facebook Marketplace that looked fine in the photos. Got it home and the RA axis has so much play I can't even get a 30 second exposure without star trails. Called a repair shop and they said the worm gear is shot, not worth fixing. Anyone dealt with this before or know a budget mount that actually works?

Checked the same nebula photo I took 2 years ago and saw a huge difference

I was digging through my old astrophotography files and compared a shot of the Orion Nebula from March 2022 with one from last week - the new one has way more detail in the core because I finally upgraded my guiding setup. Anyone else notice big improvements when they look back at their older images?

Talked with a guy at a truck stop who told me the Milky Way looks different from every angle

He was an old long-hauler who said he's seen the night sky from 48 states and claims each spot shows you a different slice of the galaxy. Made me realize I've been staring at the same backyard view for 10 years - anyone else ever driven somewhere random just to see how the stars change?

Talked with a solar astronomer at the Griffith Observatory last weekend

I always thought all those sun photos looked the same. Just a yellow ball with some dots. But this guy showed me a picture of a prominence erupting. It was 10 times the size of Earth. He explained how those loops are magnetic fields holding plasma. That hit me different because I never thought about the scale. Now I actually look at the details in every solar photo I see. Anyone else have a moment where a scientist changed how you look at a picture?

Am I the odd one out for preferring old film astrophotography over digital?

I see everyone raving about these new CMOS sensors and stacking software, but I still shoot deep sky objects on film. I switched to digital back in 2018, hated it for 6 months, then went back to my old Pentax 6x7. The grain and color from Kodak Ektar just feels more real to me, like you're actually seeing light from 10 million years ago hit a real chemical reaction. I spent $80 on a roll yesterday and that's fine with me. Anyone else still hanging onto film or am I just being stubborn?

That so-called 'beginner' shot of Orion I took with a 15 year old DSLR actually came out better than my new $800 dedicated astro camera

Everyone told me to ditch my Canon 450D for a cooled mono camera to get real results. But last Tuesday night I mounted the old DSLR on my Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer and pulled 3 minute subs of the Orion Nebula with zero guiding. Stacked 20 frames in DeepSkyStacker and the detail on the Trapezium blew away anything I got from my ZWO ASI183MC after 6 months of tweaking. So am I missing something, or are we overhyping gear over technique?

I keep seeing people call that Veil Nebula shot 'edited' when it's not

I noticed in like three different threads this week folks saying the Veil Nebula photo from the Hubble site is all fake colors and overprocessed. But here's the thing - I actually shot a narrowband image of the Veil myself last October from my backyard in Portland, using just an OIII and SII filter. The colors look almost identical to that Hubble version after I stacked 40 frames in PixInsight. People don't realize those filters pick up specific gases that naturally glow in red and blue, so it's not some artist's fantasy. It's more like taking a photo of a sunset - sure the colors pop, but the source is real. Why are we so quick to call real data 'fake' just because it doesn't look like our naked eye sees it? Has anyone else here actually processed their own narrowband data and compared it to the pro versions?

Stood in the dark for 20 minutes trying to decide between Andromeda or the Orion Nebula last night

I had my telescope set up in my backyard in Denver, and the sky was finally clear enough to get a good shot. Picked Andromeda because it was higher up and I figured I'd have less light pollution to deal with. Got some decent detail in the spiral arms, but now I'm wondering if I missed a better shot with Orion - has anyone else had to make that call on a short winter night?

My tripod gave out during a meteor shower shoot last week

I was out in the desert near Flagstaff trying to capture the Perseids when my old aluminum tripod leg just buckled. It was about 2 AM and I had my camera all set up with a remote shutter. I ended up balancing the whole rig on my camera bag and a rock for the rest of the night. Have you ever had gear fail at the worst possible moment?

Before and after of the Veil Nebula over 5 years blew my mind

I was going through some old hard drives and found a widefield shot I took of the Veil Nebula back in 2019 from my backyard in Tucson. Just for fun I set up my scope at the same spot last week and took another one. The difference is crazy the new photo has way more detail in the faint hydrogen and sulfur clouds because I stacked way more exposures this time (90 vs the old 20). Has anyone else gone back and reshot an old target and been surprised at how much better it looks now?

Snapped a photo of Orion through my window last night and it looked better than my $400 telescope shots from the backyard

I was too lazy to set up the tripod so I just held my phone up to the glass and the image came out sharper than any 30-second exposure I've ever taken, anyone else notice window glass cuts down on atmospheric distortion?

Got roasted in a Reddit thread for a photo I took near Flagstaff

I posted this shot of the Milky Way I took from a pullout on Highway 89, north of Flagstaff, back in June. Thought it looked decent, decent sharpness on the stars, good foreground, the whole deal. Then some guy with 50k karma comments that my black point is totally crushed and the stars have weird color halos from processing. I went back and looked at the raw file and sure enough, he was right, I had cranked the clarity slider way too far in Lightroom and it made everything look fake. Felt like a clown for a day or two, but I actually learned how to stretch data properly after that. Now I process like I'm showing someone the image, not trying to impress them with punchy contrast. Has anyone else had a critique that totally changed their editing workflow?

Drove 2 hours to a dark sky site in Arkansas and the moon ruined everything

I planned this trip for weeks to shoot the Milky Way at Buffalo National River, but I didn't check the moon phase. It was 80% full and washed out the whole sky. Has anyone else driven way too far only to get wrecked by bad timing?

Hot take: That one guy at the observatory who told me my stacked images were cheating

I was at a public viewing night at Griffith last month and this older guy looks at my monitor and says 'stacking isn't real astrophotography, you're just faking data.' Has anyone else run into gatekeepers like that or was it just my bad luck?

Overheard a park ranger at Mt. Rainier say phone cameras ruin the night sky

A random Reddit comment told me I was framing my Milky Way shots all wrong

Honestly, I used to always center the Milky Way right in the middle of my frame. Thought that was the whole point, you know, get it dead center. Then some guy on a forum three months ago said 'try putting it in the top third with some landscape below' and I figured why not. I live near a dark spot outside Phoenix so I gave it a shot last new moon. The result was way more interesting, like the sky had room to breathe and the ground gave it scale. Now I never center the core anymore, it always goes off to one side. Has anyone else had a tiny piece of advice that totally changed how you shoot?

That Orion nebula photo with bad tracking ruined my whole workflow

I was out at Cherry Springs State Park last month trying to stack 3 hours of Orion data. Half my frames had star trails because my mount wasn't polar aligned right. Should I stick with unguided setups or just give in and buy an autoguider for deep sky?

PSA: I was stacking my planetary shots wrong for 3 months

I spent 3 months stacking Jupiter images in RegiStax without checking the alignment box. The images always came out blurry and I just thought my scope needed collimation. Then a guy on CloudyNights pointed out that I was basically smearing 2000 frames together. He said try AutoStakkert with a 75% quality filter instead. The difference was night and day, I got a clear band detail on my very next try. Has anyone else struggled with stacking settings on lunar shots?

Compared a $200 telescope from Amazon to a $80 used one off Craigslist and the difference blew my mind

Question about that lens I tried at a star party last Friday

I borrowed a friend's old Takumar 135mm f/2.5 lens at a star party last weekend to shoot the Milky Way. I figured a vintage manual lens would be soft and full of coma, but my shots came out surprisingly sharp with almost no star trailing. I used it on my Sony A7III with an adapter, shot at ISO 1600 for 8 seconds each. The only weird thing was how the colors looked a bit warm compared to my regular glass. Has anyone else had good luck with old lenses for astro, or did I just get lucky with that specific one?

Threw $250 down the drain on a star tracker mount last year

I bought this budget star tracker off Amazon for $250 thinking it'd help me get those crisp long exposure shots without breaking the bank. First night out, it couldn't even hold my DSLR steady for a 30-second shot without drifting all over the place. Tried it four more times at different locations near Austin and every single frame came out blurry. I should've just saved up for a used Sky-Watcher instead of wasting money on that junk. Has anyone else had luck with a star tracker under $500?

Tried stacking 200 photos of the moon with my phone and a $20 tripod

I used a 3-second delay on my shutter to avoid shake and stacked them in a free program called Autostakkert. The final image was sharper than anything I got from my expensive camera lens alone. Anybody else find that cheap gear plus free software beats the expensive stuff sometimes?

Used to hate deep-sky editing until I tried Siril last month

For years I just stacked in DSS and stretched in Photoshop, but every galaxy came out looking like a muddy mess. Then a guy on Cloudy Nights told me to try Siril's background extraction and color calibration on the Andromeda data I took from a Bortle 6 zone. After running it through with just 30 minutes of tutorials, I got detail in the dust lanes that I never saw before. Anyone else switch processing software and felt like you were wasting time with the old way?

I finally get why people love those old Hubble deep field shots

I was talking to my uncle Dave last weekend, he's been into astronomy since the 80s. He pulled out a printed photo of the Hubble Deep Field from 1995 and said remember when this was mind blowing? Made me think about how we're so used to perfect James Webb images now that we forget how huge those first fuzzy pictures were. Does anyone else feel like we lost some of the wonder with all the new tech?