January 2, 2019
The Offseason
During the winter months in the northern hemisphere the galactic center of the Milky Way is not visible. So what should a astrophotographer do when the interesting bits of the Milky Way are not visible. Either go to the southern hemisphere or concentrate on photographing something else in the night sky. There are things in our night sky here in the north that are absolutely beautiful. Some you can see with the naked eye even in the most light polluted areas(I can see the Orion nebula here in Glendale).
The technical stuff…
So photographing these wonders in the sky should be easy, I’ve been photographing the Milky Way for the past 2 years. While some things are the same(no moon in the sky, a dark place, and a skytracker), some techniques needed to capture these deep space objects are quite different. Rather than using a wide angle lens, you need to use a telephoto lens, which means that you need a shorter exposure time(the rule of 500: 500/focal length*crop factor), so what would be a 20 second exposure for a Milky Way shot becomes a 1 second exposure with at 200mm lens. While a startracker will relax the 500 Rule, the precision needed to take a really long exposure is difficult to achieve.
Read MoreDuring the winter months in the northern hemisphere the galactic center of the Milky Way is not visible. So what should a astrophotographer do when the interesting bits of the Milky Way are not visible. Either go to the southern hemisphere or concentrate on photographing something else in the night sky. There are things in our night sky here in the north that are absolutely beautiful. Some you can see with the naked eye even in the most light polluted areas(I can see the Orion nebula here in Glendale).
The technical stuff…
So photographing these wonders in the sky should be easy, I’ve been photographing the Milky Way for the past 2 years. While some things are the same(no moon in the sky, a dark place, and a skytracker), some techniques needed to capture these deep space objects are quite different. Rather than using a wide angle lens, you need to use a telephoto lens, which means that you need a shorter exposure time(the rule of 500: 500/focal length*crop factor), so what would be a 20 second exposure for a Milky Way shot becomes a 1 second exposure with at 200mm lens. While a startracker will relax the 500 Rule, the precision needed to take a really long exposure is difficult to achieve.
Orion Nebula
After the experience at Red Rock, I refined my technique to shoot multiple 30 second shots with the skytracker and then combine those shots. This makes each individual shot less prone to exhibit star trails and still can produce a long exposure. This was shot with a 200mm lens with a total exposure time of 15 minutes and 30 seconds(31 shots).
