this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
632 points (99.7% liked)

pics

19612 readers
424 users here now

Rules:

1.. Please mark original photos with [OC] in the title if you're the photographer

2..Pictures containing a politician from any country or planet are prohibited, this is a community voted on rule.

3.. Image must be a photograph, no AI or digital art.

4.. No NSFW/Cosplay/Spam/Trolling images.

5.. Be civil. No racism or bigotry.

Photo of the Week Rule(s):

1.. On Fridays, the most upvoted original, marked [OC], photo posted between Friday and Thursday will be the next week's banner and featured photo.

2.. The weekly photos will be saved for an end of the year run off.

Weeks 2023

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://mastodon.world/about

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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 :)

top 23 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] apigban@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fuckin beautiful

How did you get started?

[–] ludw@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.
[–] AwkwardPenguin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Amazing!! Thank you for the share.

[–] ludw@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Here you can see where to find it in the night sky (assuming you find the Orion constellation): https://www.go-astronomy.com/images/constellations/Orion.jpg

M42 is what the picture is of. Easy to find but hard (impossible?) to see without a camera.

[–] mxwarp@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The galaxy is on Orion’s Belt

[–] alaxitoo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow awesome work! Would make a lovely phone wallpaper hmm… 🤔

[–] ludw@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] alaxitoo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

You’re the best thank you 😃 I’m a sucker for space-y wallpapers 🚀

[–] jbernardini@boulder.ly 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

enhance.

just kidding, fantastic!

[–] aslaii@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you see this realtime? Or do you have to do those long exposures?

[–] ludw@lemmy.world 1 points 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.

[–] shtpst@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago
[–] yggdar@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.world 9 points 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@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] jd3@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm gonna screenshot it and share on Fakebook.

Pleasure to be back on the old school style web!

[–] Raildrake@vlemmy.net 1 points 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.

load more comments
view more: next ›