So, I've reciently started to play around with Astrophotography, or taking pictures of the night sky (NOT to be confused with astrology).
Have any of you tried this before? It's not as easy as it may seem... for one main reason. The stars, nebulae, and galaxies are all fairly dim, so you need to leave the camera open for a longer period of time to capture enough light. The issue with this is that the earth is constantly spinning, so unless your camera moves with it, you'll end up with a totally out of focus picture, which can be cool if you want star trails.
However, if you want something like a galaxy in clear focus, you have two options. First is a super long exposure, on a mount that moves with the sky, or numerous shorter exposures that you then stack in software. Right now I'm starting to mess with the latter option, since I dont have any way to track the stars.
Heres some of the better shots I've taken thus far:
The moon, taken by aiming my camera through a telescope eyepiece. VERY HARD to do accurately. Surprised it came out this clear.
The Milky Way
My first attempt to take some photos of Andromeda Galaxy:
My second attempt, along with the process of postprocessing:
Andromeda and the only picture I took during the Orionids that had a meteor in it:
I'll add more shots as I take them, I hope to see my abilties improve as I go.
