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Old 07-25-2018, 9:59am   #179
TripleBlack
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Originally Posted by 04 commemorative View Post
One day I want to learn how do take pics like that, not sure my Camera is good enough....most pics I take I have it on auto.
Great work
Deep space images don't require as sophisticated a camera as you might think. It helps to have a DSLR or mirrorless camera with good low light performance and you need interchangeable lenses. But by far, the most important thing is having a mount that very slowly moves the camera to compensate for the earth's rotation. At 400mm, stars will blur or streak in exposures over 1.25 seconds or so. These were 5 minute exposures.

But, if your camera has a manual mode and a reasonably wide angle lens, 25mm or so, you can get pretty nice shots of the Milky Way if you find a dark area. At 25mm you can take a 20 second exposure on a regular tripod at ISO 3200 and get something you can see providing you lens has a fairly large aperture - f3.5 at least.

Check out the Lonely Speck website for some solid info on how to get started. https://www.lonelyspeck.com/

This was my very first Milky Way image taken about 6 years ago. I knew very little about astrophotography but driving late one night I noticed I could see the Milky Way... not a sight I was used to seeing from the DFW area. I had a DSLR, an 11-16 f2.8 lens and a tripod. I put the camera on the tripod, pointed it nearly straight up, focused on infinity, set the ISO to 3200, and took a 30 second exposure. Was amazed when I pulled the images up on the PC. I didn't know until very recently that the blurry splotch of light in the upper right of the frame is Andromeda. Was surprised to learn that the apparent size of Andromeda is about 3 times the apparent size of the moon.

Lucky catch on my first cast.

Click image for larger version

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