Can you shoot Milky Way photos using an entry-level crop-sensor DSLR and a basic kit lens? Yes, you can, but there are some tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to improve your results. Photographer Michael Ver Sprill (AKA Milky Way Mike) made this 16-minute video tutorial as a basic guide to doing this.
A team of five French amateur astrophotographers has captured a gorgeous 204-megapixel, 1,060-hour photo of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Jupiter and the Moon were in conjunction this week, appearing close together in the night sky. The event led astrophotography enthusiast Rami Ammoun to create this composite photo showing the relative sizes of the two celestial objects in the sky as seen from Earth.
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.
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.
Photographers have captured many awe-inspiring photos of solar eclipses in recent years. But Earth isn't the only planet photos are being shot from: NASA's Curiosity rover has captured some beautiful solar eclipse photos over the past few weeks from the surface of Mars.
During an earthquake, a camera capturing a long exposure of the night sky can capture star trails as seismograms that records the motion of the ground.
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.
Sacramento-based astrophotography enthusiast Andrew McCarthy extracted color data from 150,000 photos of the moon to create this enhanced photo showing all the different splashes of color on the surface left by impacts of different minerals.
NASA astronaut Drew Feustel grew up in Detroit and is an avid car and racing enthusiast. So much so that while commanding the International Space Station in 2018, Feustel photographed racetracks from space with a Nikon DSLR before watching the race itself in his free time.
Check out this incredible photo of the moon. It may look like it was captured using some ultra-advanced (and expensive) equipment, but it was actually created by astrophotography enthusiast Andrew McCarthy by capturing and combining 50,000 photos.
What would iconic space probe photos of celestial bodies in our solar system look like if they had been shot with an ordinary smartphone camera? Astronomer Scott Manley made this 12.5-minute video that explains the answer, which is: "not much."
Philadelphia-based photographer Bruce W. Berry Jr. took recent photos and videos captured from the International Space Station (ISS) and edited them into this gorgeous 6-minute short film that takes viewers on a journey around the world.
A Chinese satellite currently orbiting the moon has captured a beautiful photo showing both the far side (AKA dark side) of the Moon as well as planet Earth in the background.
Roughly two years ago, I bought my first decent DSLR camera. I was overprotective, cleaning every bit of dust I could see and adding extra padding in my bag to avoid any possible accidents whenever I carried it around.
Here's a new photo that shows Earth and the Moon from a whopping 71 million miles away. It was captured by NASA's OSIRIS-REx, which is currently on a mission to obtain a sample from a near-Earth asteroid and return it to Earth.
Check out this family portrait of our solar system. It's a composite photo created by a single astrophotographer who photographed the planets from his own backyard in Sacramento, California.
During the Geminid meteor shower in December 2018, Colorado-based photographer Dean Rowe managed to capture this massive meteor streaking across the sky with a length 60 times the angular diameter of the Moon.
NASA has released the first clear, close-up photos of an object at the edge of our Solar System. The photos of Ultima Thule were captured by the New Horizon's spacecraft during its flyby on January 1st, 2019, 4.1 billion miles (6.6B km) away from Earth.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released an eye-opening pair of new photos that show a massive crater of water ice on Mars. The crater measures 51 miles (83km) across and contains a 1.1-mile-thick (1.8km) mound of water ice all year round.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is on a mission to explore the Sun's corona (basically its atmosphere), and the robotic spacecraft recently made the closest-ever approach to a star. NASA just shared a remarkable photo share by Parker: the first photo ever shot from inside the Sun's corona.
Before we get started, it's essential to understand that astrophotography takes time and practice in order to achieve good results, so don't get frustrated if you don't nail it on the first go.
To celebrate 20 years of international collaboration, the European Space Agency released this 15-minute video that's the longest continuous time-lapse shot from space.
The astronauts onboard the International Space Station get new cameras delivered from time to time -- 10 Nikon D5s arrived in late 2017 after NASA ordered 55 of them. But did you know that it's extremely expensive to stock the ISS astronauts' camera arsenal? That camera kit you see above cost at least $150,000 to send to the space station.
NASA just released this new close-up photo of the swirling clouds found on Jupiter. It was captured by the Juno spacecraft on October 29th, 2018, during its 16th close flyby of the gas giant.
NASA has released the first 8K footage ever shot in space. This 3-minute video was captured aboard the International Space Station using a RED Helium 8K camera, and it shows the astronaut residents living, working, and conducting research.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich prestigious Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest has unveiled the overall winners for the 2018 edition. The top prize was awarded to American photographer Brad Goldpaint, whose photo "Transport the Soul" (shown above) captures Moab, Utah, with a photographer, rock formations, Andromeda (left) and the Milky Way (right).
A week after giving us the first photo from the surface of asteroid 162173 Ryugu, Japan's MINERVA rovers have just sent back new views of the asteroid's surface, including the first video ever from an asteroid's surface.
Japan just made history by landing two small rovers on the surface of an asteroid hurtling through space 174 million miles (280 million km) from Earth, and here's the first published photo from the rovers shot from the surface of 162173 Ryugu.
SpaceX just revealed that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be its first space tourist for a trip to the moon as early as 2023, and Maezawa is planning to select a group of artists, including a photographer, for a free 5-day lunar trip with him.
Deep Sky West is a remote astrophotography observatory in New Mexico, USA. It offers the opportunity for any astrophotographer around the world to use the site to access clear skies without the need to travel there, and to use advanced astronomy and photography equipment without the need to own it themselves.
Think the Hubble Space Telescope's photos are impressive? The $1 billion Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) under construction in Chile will shoot photos with 10 times the resolution of NASA's Hubble telescope.
The Huawei P20 Pro smartphone boasts the highest-scoring smartphone camera ever evaluated by DxOMark, sitting head and shoulders above its competition with an overall score of 109. Here's how good the on-board Leica triple-camera system is: you can shoot beautiful shots of the Milky Way in the starry night sky.
What would an 8-bit astrophotography video game be like? That's what astrophotographer and PhD student Alex Pietrow asked, and he ended up creating a new video game called Astronomer for the the Atari 2600, the classic console that was launched back in 1977.
Astronauts on the International Space Station have shot and shared gorgeous views of our planet in recent years. Here's a 5-minute video by Big Think in which NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield offers an inside look at what shooting photos on the ISS is like.
I’ve always been fascinated by the night sky, and one of my favorite things to look out for is the International Space Station when it passes overhead. It still boggles my mind that there are people up there, 200 miles into space. Perhaps they are looking down too. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to photograph an ISS transit – in other words, photographing the ISS as it flies in front of the moon!
I normally love to plan my photos and I would have liked to plan a cool shot with yesterday’s moon eclipse. However, when I planned my current trip to Kyrgyzstan, I didn’t realize I would be there with the lunar eclipse of 2018 (bad planning, I know).
About 4 months ago, I posted a photo of my 7-hexagon canvas cluster to Reddit's r/space (on a Sunday, the only day you're allowed to post your own astro photos to the sub). The title of the post was: "I'm a photographer and print-maker and my passion is the night sky. I made this 7-hexagon canvas cluster in honor of the forthcoming James Webb Telescope. The photo is of the Milky Way over WEBBer Lake, CA."
It is the hottest time of the day during the hottest month of the year in Montana, but two hundred feet above me a pair of nighthawks sense a change. They dive and twist with a grace somewhere between fighter pilot and falling leaf, air buzzing through their wingtips, raspy calls beckoning night, commanding the sun to set. The single, sand-rock knob that I sit on here in the prairie while I watch their aerial display will hold the heat I feel through my jeans well into darkness.
People ask me all the time how I get my night shots with the stars, so I made a video on the subject. Here are my 7 tips for crushing night photography.
Astrophotography is generally a race against time to capture as much subtle starlight we can before the stars create trails in our images. The movement of the Earth puts a natural limit on how much sharp, subtle detail we can reveal. We have to use super fast, wide angle lenses and high ISO values to see all the awesome detail. Fortunately, a tool exists to circumvent this barrier to reveal more of the hidden magic we have in our night sky.
Mars is closer to Earth and brighter than its been since back in 2003. It's so bright that photographer Abdul Dremali managed to capture this photo of the planet casting a bright reflection on the ocean as it rose into the night sky.
I’m an avid night sky photographer that cut my teeth capturing the stars using the original Canon 6D. I shot with that camera for years until purchasing the Sony a7S (Mark I) after reading about how it could essentially “see in the dark.”
Behold: this is the first confirmed image of a planet being born. The image was captured by SPHERE, a planet-hunting instrument on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope.
Two years ago, I splurged some money and bought a camera because I'd always wanted to try to take pictures of the stars. The left photo above was the only decent picture out of 700 taken on my first clueless attempt. The right photo was taken about 2 weeks ago. Don't let your dreams be dreams.
Photographer and astronomer Juan Carlos Munoz was browsing a flea market in Santiago, Chile, a few days ago when he stumbled across some crystal balls. He bought one for a few dollars and then decided to use it for astrophotography. This "cosmic marble" photo of the Milky Way in a crystal ball is what resulted.
The camera triggering company MIOPS has just announced the Capsule360, a new app-controlled motion box that the company claims is the world's "most compact and versatile motion box ever created." It's one motion system that aims to do it all.
Over the last year or so, firmware updates from Sony introduced a much-publicized penchant for Sony Alphas to “eat” stars even in RAW files, apparently due to an internal noise reduction or anti-aliasing routine users could not turn off. Stars were smoothed away along with the noise in exposures longer than 3.2 seconds in some Sony cameras (and longer than 30 seconds in others). I feel that in the a7 III, the Star Eater has now been largely vanquished.
Ordinary cameras can be modified for astrophotography by introducing additional cooling for the sensor. CentralDS has one extreme way of keeping sensors chilly: it extracts sensors from cameras and moves them into their own external cooling module.
The ongoing eruption of the Kilauea volcano on the big island of Hawaii has led to tens of thousands of evacuations and the destruction of tens of homes. And the eruption has grown to such a scale that it can now be easily seen from the International Space Station.