milkyway

How to Photograph the Milky Way Core Season

Milky Way core season is right around the corner. I wrote this quickie guide on how to photograph our galaxy for anyone interested in going out to do some astrophotography this season!

36 Awe-Inspiring Sun, Moon, and Milky Way Photos of 2020

The popular outdoor photo planning app PhotoPills has picked 36 of the best Sun, Moon, and Milky Way photos captured by photographers in its community over the past year. If you need some photo inspiration and enjoy night sky shots, this is the gallery for you.

Six Incredible Photos of Galaxies Colliding

As part of its celebration of a new year, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has published six different galaxy mergers. These rare astronomical phenomena were captured as part of a recent survey to investigate the rate of new star formations.

Photographer Captures Pyro Skydivers in a Milky Way Photo

Photographer Dustin Snipes recently did a project that takes light-painting photography to a whole new level. Teaming up with the Red Bull Air Force Team, he shot long-exposure photos of wingsuit skydivers falling to Earth while wearing sparkling pyrotechnics.

Akaka Falls by Moonlight: How I Got the Shot

Summer and Fall are wonderful for photographing the Milky Way here in Hawai'i. We have many locations with dark skies and breathtaking scenery too. In October, the brightest part of the Milky Way (galactic core) is near the horizon at sunset; by November it'll be below the horizon when it gets dark.

NASA Turns Space Photos Into Music

NASA has a new project that turns space photos into sounds. Using sonification, images obtained from telescopes are turned into "music" that sounds like what you'd hear when your operating system boots up.

You Can Shoot 96MP Pixel-Shift Astro Photos with the Panasonic Lumix S5

The Panasonic Lumix S5 has just been released in New Zealand, and I received mine a few days ago. Last night, with clear skies, I took it to the south coast of Wellington, New Zealand, to see what the new advances in High Resolution mode included in the S5 could bring.

This is a Milky Way Timelapse Shot on 35mm Film

Photographer Jason De Freitas recently took his 35mm film camera out into the night and spent over an hour manually shooting a photo every minute. He then turned those photos into this 30-second time-lapse of the Milky Way.

This Full Astrophotography Workshop is Now Available for Free on YouTube

Ian Norman and Diana Southern over at Lonely Speck just uploaded their full 2016 astrophotography workshop to YouTube for free. This incredible resource covers everything from getting the shot, to basic editing, image stacking, and panorama stitching. They even included the Q&A from the end of the meetup!

How I Photograph the Milky Way with Medium Format Film

My name is Jason De Freitas (@jase.film on Instagram), and I'm an analog photographer based in Australia. In this article, I'll share how I shoot the Milky Way from my backyard on medium format film.

Astrophotographer Reviews the Google Pixel 4’s Astro Mode

Astrophotographer Ian Norman of Lonely Speck recently got his hands on a Google Pixel 4 XL for testing, so he took it out to Joshua Tree National Park to see how well the "Astrophotography Mode" on this smartphone compares to shooting with a "real" camera.

This 8K Timelapse Captures Every Level of Light Pollution from LA to the Great Basin Desert

Last year, photographer and filmmaker Asif Islam of Asif Photography set out to capture an 8K timelapse that would show the impact of Light Pollution. So he travelled from one of the most light polluted places in the world all the way to one of the least, capturing every level of light pollution along the way. The result is an award winning timelapse called Where are the Stars?.

How to Use Google Earth for Extremely Detailed Location Scouting

There are a lot of great location scouting tools out there. But while PhotoPills and The Photographer's Ephemeris do an amazing job and are packed full of useful features, photographer Tony Northrup explains why he prefers to use something else that's completely free: Google Earth.

I Shoot Fake Miniature Scenes with the Real Milky Way

Breaking the rules and thinking outside the box is something a photographer should always try. You start your journey with photography capturing everything interesting you see, jumping from one genre to the other until you find your favorite style.

The Medium Format Experience: High ISO and the Milky Way

For several years I had believed that shooting a medium format camera at high ISO would yield terrible results. Most likely there would be no point in trying, I thought. However, a few days ago I nevertheless brought the Pentax 645Z and the Pentax 25mm f/4 out into the darkness where the zoombies reign — in my imagination anyway.

How to Enhance the Starry Night Sky in Photoshop

Let's say I would like to enhance the stars in this Milky Way landscape photo. I could load the image into Camera Raw and add some Clarity at the risk of adding noise and artifacts to the night sky. Another way of doing it could be to use “Select Color Range” combined with a curves or levels adjustment. However, I often find that these methods don't yield satisfactory results.

NASA Captures the Galaxy’s Biggest Fireworks Show

As photographers in the US are gearing up to capture photos of 4th of July fireworks, NASA has released a gorgeous "fireworks" photo of its own. It's a shot of a "the galaxy's biggest ongoing stellar fireworks show" that started 170 years ago.

Shooting the Stars in Light-Polluted Singapore with the Huawei P30 Pro

The moment I had been waiting for finally arrived exactly 49 days after I got my Huawei P30 Pro. This is one of my final tests for the phone after shooting the Milky Way handheld and a meter. So what’s the big deal about this test? Because photographing the Milky Way in Singapore with a DSLR was deemed impossible by many astrophotography veterans here just 5 years ago.

Yes, The Huawei P30 Pro Can Shoot the Milky Way (and Even Meteors)

My Huawei P30 Pro arrived at 4:30 pm on April 6th, and I knew the night sky in Mersing would be amazing for me to try out this low-light beast. I had read a lot of good reviews on P30 Pro, but I was still skeptical, so I booked a room at my regular resort on the same day and drove 3 hours to get there.

Scientific Errors in Those Nat Geo Milky Way Photos

The night sky offers an unlimited source of markers (e.g. stars, constellations, Milky Way, etc.) that never lie about the time of year and location in the world you shot a night sky picture from. You don’t even need to be a professional astronomer or to double-check RAW files to prove it.

Shooting a Milky Way Moonrise from an Airplane Seat

A couple of weeks ago I was blessed with a sight that truly left me in a state of awe. Shortly after leveling off onboard United 534 from Honolulu to Los Angeles, I tried my luck with some astrophotography over the crisp Pacific Ocean skies.

This Milky Way Photo on Nat Geo is Raising Eyebrows

National Geographic recently published a series of gorgeous photos by photographer Beth Moon that shows some of the world's oldest trees under the stars. But one photo, in particular, is now raising eyebrows after sharp-eyed readers noticed something strange about it.

Shooting the Milky Way in Missouri

Living in St. Louis almost my entire life, I was lead to believe the lights of the bustling city were too bright to make seeing stars anywhere nearby impossible. As I grew older and started getting serious about photography, I realized that was correct... kinda.

These Photos Show Why We Need to Preserve the Night Sky

Due to the rapid growth in population, an increasing percentage of the human population lives in cities and suburbs where the night sky is completely obscured by the artificial lights. Skylines littered with lit skyscrapers reach sky high. An endless river of traffic flashing high beams. And the cities are ever-expanding. It is conceivable that most people have lived without having seen the true natural night sky.

Six Years of McWay Falls

McWay Falls has been a tourist destination for longer than many of us even heard of the place, but it wasn't until 2012 that photographer Steven Christenson really "discovered" the potential of the site at night. Nestled in the rugged and gorgeous part of the California coast better known as Big Sur, McWay Falls enjoys extremely dark skies.

Drone vs DSLR: Shooting the Milky Way

This was a fun experiment and, to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s been done before. I read about photographers capturing the Milky Way with their phones so I wanted to put a drone to the test and see what it could do while hovering. As it turns out you can not only catch the Milky Way’s galactic core but also meteors and satellites as well.

How to Photograph the Milky Way

This guide will be a walkthrough of the basics of Milky Way photography. It is best for beginners, but even intermediate and expert photographers might find something new! Plus, I always find it never hurts to refresh yourself on the basics.