To reveal the real colors of the night skies, you need to find good dark skies. The best sky quality for astrophotography is found in locations classified as Bortle Class 1 on the Bortle scale, which measures night sky brightness.
So you’ve found your perfect spot to capture the night sky. The weather is perfect and you’ve been tracking the stars and planets for weeks to capture this moment. But, when that perfect moment comes, the pictures you’ve captured end up hazy and soft. Why? Likely due to excessive light pollution from the surrounding area, especially if you’re nearby a larger city.
Unistellar says that it has developed a new technology that can eliminate city light pollution when taking photos or just stargazing through its telescopes.
It turns out light pollution might be worse than it appears by satellite. The problem has been steadily increasing over the years, which creates added difficulties for night photography.
The Vaonis Vespera Observation Station is a small robotic telescope designed to be smart and fully automated, taking the guesswork out of astronomy and making it easy for beginners to start their journey.
Astrophotography still is one of the most popular photographic genres in the world and as we are in the middle of the Milky Way season, it is a very good opportunity to take an in-depth look in a very helpful accessory for better night sky photos.
Travel and adventure photography blog Capture the Atlas has published its annual Milky Way Photographer of the Year collection that showcases the best night sky captures from all around the world.
Travel and adventure photography blog Capture the Atlas has released the results of its annual Milky Way Photographer of the Year, a collection of 25 stunning photos showcase the night sky from locations all over the world.
Hundreds of astronomers, satellite operators, and dark-sky advocates recently joined forces to call out a problem that impacts all three groups: the growing number of SpaceX 'Starlink' satellites in orbit, and how these 'constellations' could actively hurt scientific progress and have a 'fatal' impact on some forms of astrophotography.
As NASA recently warned, the light pollution caused by the boom in satellites is indeed "wreaking havoc" on astrophotography. Photographer Daniel López tried to shoot a telephoto timelapse of Comet NEOWISE this week but was thwarted by SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
Travel and photography blog Capture the Atlas has released its latest installment of the "Milky Way Photographer of the Year" compilation—an annual collection of 25 photos that highlights some of the best night sky images from around the world.
As more and more satellites are being launched into space, reflected light from these objects is causing increased sky pollution and issues for astronomers and astrophotographers. Now NASA is asking the public for help in monitoring this growing issue, and all you need to do is shoot smartphone photos of the light streaks in the night sky.
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?.
Singapore is known to be the most light-polluted city on Earth, so it's not exactly the go-to destination for astrophotography. But there are talented astrophotographers working on the island city-state, and this 3-minute documentary titled "Galactic Paint" is about one of them.
Kenko Tokina's filter and accessory brand Hoya has released a new filter for night sky photographers. It's called the "Starscape Light Pollution Cut Filter," and it's meant to reduce the yellow and greenish color cast caused by city lights when you're trying to capture the stars.
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.
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.
Irix has launched its new line of EDGE light pollution lens filters. The lens filters are designed to help photographers obtain better results when shooting photos of the night sky.
Looking for exceptionally dark skies in the United States? It seems Idaho is the place to visit. A large patch of land in central Idaho has just been designated the first International Dark Sky Reserve in the country, and it's one of only 12 such reserves on Earth.
Shooting the night sky can produce amazing images of endless starry skies, but it can be challenging to those used to working with plenty of light. This 15-minute beginner’s guide from Josh Katz teaches the key elements of astrophotography, and how to capture the sky even in sub-optimal conditions.
This incredible timelapse of the Grand Canyon filling up with clouds is beautiful beyond words. Shot on Canon 5DSR and 5D Mark III cameras, the film captures an extremely rare phenomenon called a full cloud inversion.
How much of an impact does light pollution have on how we see the night sky? Photographer Sriram Murali has created a new video that aims to show us the answer.
The Taiwanese company STC Optical has created a slide-in filter for Canon and Nikon full frame DSLRs that can reduce light pollution in astrophotography. It's called the STC Astro-Multispectra Clip Filter.
Light pollution is a drag for night sky photographers, usually requiring some post-processing magic in Lightroom or Photoshop to fix. But what if you could slap on a special glass filter that drastically cut down on the light pollution your camera sensor captures? Well... you can.
Want to see light pollution changes photos of the starry night sky? Photographer Sriram Murali's new time-lapse short film will show you. Titled "Lost in Light," it shows different locations with progressively lower levels of light pollution.
This made us very sad. According to a new report published in the Journal of Science Advances, one third of humanity and approximately 80% of North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live due to light pollution.
What kind of nighttime time-lapses could you shoot in cities like Los Angeles if light pollution weren't a problem? A couple of time-lapse photographers want to show you. They've created an experimental time-lapse that shows a sky full of stars and star trails over the light-polluted city of Los Angeles.
A couple of days ago, we republished a short tutorial by talented photographer Justin Ng that explained how he uses the Expose To The Right (ETTR) method to capture milky way photos in the heavy light pollution of Singapore.
But if you'd like a more detailed, video run through, this tutorial by astrophotographer Ian Norman -- whose Sony a7S Astrophotography Review, incidentally, appeared on PetaPixel yesterday -- shows you exactly how to adjust your images to get the perfect results.
When it comes to photographing the elusive Milky Way in one of the most light-polluted major cities like Singapore, timing is critical. Most of the faint details will be washed out by the extreme light pollution and if we were to shoot the Milky Way under unfavorable atmospheric conditions, our attempt would be futile.
Unfortunately, most of the tutorials online only work in locations that are at least 2 stops darker than most of the dark locations in Singapore and so, we need to do more in post-processing to unveil the elusive Milky Way and more complex workflow is required if we’re shooting at much brighter locations.