In an effort to simplify and condense photography kits, Benro has launched the Polaris: an electric tripod head combined with a smart camera controller. It combines the benefits of a traditional tripod head with the smart controls necessary for complicated camera moves.
The International Space Station's current Expedition 64 crew has recently shared a few gorgeous photos of Earth's auroras. The stunning natural colors are thanks to the station's orbit that takes it as high as 51.6 degrees above the equator.
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.
As a showcase of its CE-SAT-1 Earth-imaging satellite, Canon is allowing anyone to take their own photos of Earth from space as part of a demonstration for CES.
Planning is key to capturing the best Milky Way images. Unlike other types of photography, shooting our galaxy requires you to consider many astronomical factors, like the sunset, the moon phase, and the Milky Way’s location in the sky.
Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
Researchers with the University of Arizona have released a new close-up image of Mars's giant canyon that was taken with NASA's HiRISE camera which sits onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images were captured in an attempt to ascertain the origins of the canyon.
The astronauts who work on the International Space Station (ISS) have some of the best views of our planet that can be imagined. Thousands of photos of that view are captured every year, but which ones are NASA's favorites?
During the peak of the astronomical event that was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in December, a photographer named Garret who goes by gm_astrphotography posted a photo that sparked some debate to its authenticity. The fact is, the image is 100% legitimate.
Last night, photographers and stargazers around the world were treated to the Great Conjunction, a event in which Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer to each other in the sky than they have for hundreds of years. Countless photos were undoubtedly snapped of the rare sight, but photographer Jason De Freitas captured a particularly lucky one a few days ago showing the ISS zipping between the two planets.
With several astrolnomical events coinciding with the Winter Solstice, including the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction and the Ursids Meteor Shower, December 21st is poised to be a prime opportunity for practicing nighttime and astrophotography skills.
In celebration of its 30th anniversary capturing stunning images of stellar objects, NASA has released 30 newly-processed Hubble images featuring galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae.
Japaneses astronaut Soichi Noguchi has emerged as the International Space Station's resident photographer, uploading a slew of incredible images of Earth taken from the Cupola Observational Module.
Three photographers recently sent a professional full-frame camera, the Sony a7S III, to near space on a weather balloon and managed to capture groundbreaking "close-up" shots of the Aurora Borealis (the "northern lights").
I took the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S out to see how it performed taking astrophotography and nightscape photos with a Nikon Z6. I’ve compiled notes and comparison images to help those out who are looking at purchasing this lens for astrophotography and nightscape photos.
The European Space Agency (ESA) satellite observatory Gaia, whose mission is to produce a 3D map of the Milky Way, has sent back a new and updated map of the galaxy that contains detailed information on more than 1.8 billion sources and is being called a "treasure trove for astronomers."
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was built in 1963 and was the world's largest single-unit radio telescope until China's construction of the FAST in 2016. After struggling with structural issues for some time, the dish finally collapsed and the violent destruction was caught on video.
China's Chang'e 5 probe landed on the surface of the moon on December 1, 2020. Less than a day later, it has sent back a short video of its descent along with an extremely high-resolution panoramic image of the surface of the moon.
Photographer Andrew McCarthy is known for shooting incredible astrophotography images from his backyard in Sacramento, California. He recently added two more jaw-dropping images to his portfolio: ultra-clear views of the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the Sun and Moon.
Image stacking is a technique used in astrophotography to reduce noise and recover signal. It means taking multiple shots of object (usually long exposures) and combining them to create a cleaner image.
It's not the kind of astrophotography most of us are going to be doing, but NASA just used infrared imaging to make a major discovery: the space agency has detected traces of water in a crater on the sunlit surface of the Moon.
A must-have tool when shooting a number of photography genres, including the night sky, is a remote release trigger for your camera. Triggers range from very simple cable releases over phone apps that connect to your camera’s Wi-Fi to very specialized intervalometers. I wanted to build something even better...
In a project that took 5 years to capture, 500 hours of editing, and 42 total hours to process, astrophotographer Matt Harbison has completed a dream started in 2013: capturing, processing, and making available an incredibly detailed 2.5 gigapixel photo of the Orion Constellation.
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.
Last year, Vaonis launched an astrophotography system called Stellina. Expensive and a bit bulky, it wasn't for everyone. However, the company's latest camera/telescope hybrid, called Vespera, offers many of the same features as Stellina for a quarter the cost: $1,000.
Developer Mark Hambly has created a free NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day app that takes advantage of the new widgets feature in iOS 14 to add a bit of astrophotography inspiration to your iPhone's home screen every day.
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.
As recently as the early 1900s, astronomers believed the Milky Way was all that existed in the universe. That view persisted until 1923, when Edwin Hubble used glass plate photographs of the Andromeda galaxy (then still thought to be just a nebula) to discover that the universe was unimaginably larger. His discovery was so significant that NASA’s first space telescope was given his name.
NASA has just published a stunning, one-of-a-kind time-lapse captured by the Hubble telescope. The short video shows an exploding star (AKA a supernova) in a galaxy 70-million light-years from Earth—a fireworks show so bright it outshone every other star in its galaxy before fading into oblivion.
Sigma UK recently teamed up with the company Sent Into Space to... well... send a couple of their cameras to space. The group tied a pair of Sigma fp's to two weather balloons and sent them each to an altitude of ~100,000 feet so they could capture some stunning photos and 4K RAW video of Earth from the upper atmosphere.
The cosmetics giant Estee Lauder is paying NASA $128,000 for a product photography shoot onboard the International Space Station.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Insight Investment 2020 Astrophotographer of the Year, Nicolas Lefaudeux, has revealed his technique and the simple DIY adapter that made his award-winning image of the Andromeda galaxy possible.
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.
The folks at French startup Vaonis recently put their robotic camera telescope Stellina through its most intense test yet: capturing a 208,000-photo mosaic of the night sky, without any need for human input or astrophotography expertise. The result is breathtaking.
Photographer Brent Hall recently went out to shoot a comparison video that a lot of Canon shooters are eager to see: the brand new EOS R5 vs the EOS R6, for astrophotography, at high ISO. Does the lower resolution sensor of the R6 give it a low-light advantage?
The Royal Observatory Greenwich has just unveiled the winners of the coveted 2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards. And this year's top prize went to a beautiful photograph of the Andromeda galaxy that makes it seem as if you could actually reach out and touch it.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have just captured the world's first 3,200MP photos using an image sensor array that will become the heart of the world's largest digital camera. While higher res photos have been stitched together before, these are the largest single-frame digital photographs ever captured.
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.
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.
During the peak of this year's Perseid meteor shower, photographer Matt Dieterich pointed his camera at Mount Rainier and created this photo of the meteors and Milky Way erupting from the active volcano.
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!
Want an astrophotography challenge that doesn't come around very often? Try photographing Saturn peeking out from behind the Moon.
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT) has captured a world's first: the first ever image of two giant exoplanets orbiting a young 'Sun-like' star 300 light years away from our own. The photograph could provide important information about the formation of our own solar system.
As photographers across the world are trying their hands at shooting Comet NEOWISE before it's gone for the next 6,000 years, astronauts onboard the ISS have a nice view of the comet that isn't obscured by Earth's atmosphere. Here's a 7-minute real-time video showing what NEOWISE looks like from about 254 miles above our planet's surface.
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.
NASA and the ESA's new Solar Orbiter is off to an auspicious start. The spacecraft's very first images of the Sun—captured from within 48 million miles of our closest star—weren't just taken from closer than ever before... they've already revealed a new solar phenomenon.
Yesterday, the official Twitter account of the International Space Station posted a short video interview in which NASA astronaut Doug Hurley explains what it's like to try and capture the beauty of Earth from 250 miles above.
Well-known French astrophotographer and amateur astronomer Thierry Legault released this 50-second video showing an ISS solar transit he just captured. It's notable for being the first time the ISS's Canadarm2 robotic arm has been photographed during a transit.
Astrophotographer Bartosz Wojczyński created this mesmerizing timelapse that shows the Earth rotating over the course of 24 hours by using the heavens as the point of reference rather than the landscape.
Back in February, photographer Jason Guenzel began photographing a particular galaxy in the sky on moonless nights. Then in early May, he captured something unexpected and extremely rare: a star exploding, or the birth of a supernova.