Space

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.

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.

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.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was deployed on April 25, 1990, so this week marked the 28th anniversary of the telescope providing humankind with breathtaking photos of deep space. To celebrate, NASA released this 30-second video that zooms into the Milky Way's central bulge to a new photo just released of the Lagoon Nebula over 4,000 light years away.

How does SpaceX get such clear and detailed imagery and footage of its rocket launches? Here's a 5-minute video from Primal Space that answers that question.

NASA has published a pair of record-breaking photos. These two images that show Kuiper belt objects in the outer Solar System were captured by the farthest-ever cameras from Earth.

Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to leave Earth's orbit, orbit the Moon, and return to Earth. Since it wasn't a moon landing, though, it tends to not be as celebrated as other manned moon missions. But the photo known as Earthrise was captured during this mission on December 24th, 1968, becoming an iconic piece of history. This 6-minute video from Vintage Space explores the question of who the person behind the camera was.

Astronaut photographers on the International Space Station have dazzled us for years with eye-popping photos and videos shot from orbit. To learn more behind-the-scenes details of photography on the space station, photographer Jared Polin interviewed NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.

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.

NASA's Juno space probe has been orbiting Jupiter and dazzling us with photos of the giant gas planet for over a year now. In recent days, Juno has captured a number of gorgeous close-up photos that look strangely like impressionist art.

Samsung smartphone are about to get a lot more internal storage. Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production of a 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage solution that will appear in the next generation of smartphones from the South Korean giant.

After getting his hands on the new Sigma 14mm f/1.8 Art lens recently, photographer Alyn Wallace decided to take it out into the Elan Valley Dark Sky Park in Wales to put it through its paces. His first test: shooting the Milky Way handheld.

Filmmaker Kevin McGloughlin and musician Max Cooper just released this new video titled "Resynthesis." For the visuals, McGloughlin explored the ideas of space and time using still photos and real-time footage captured using a Sony a7R II mirrorless camera.

Here's an 8-minute tutorial from Nature TTL and astrophotographer Matthew Saville about how to photograph star trails. Considered by some as the holy grail of astrophotography, this technique harnesses the rotation of the Earth for captivating images.

Photographer Cole Rise has a deep obsession with space cameras. So deep, that he just spent over two years creating a 100% accurate replica of the first Hasselblad medium format camera used by NASA in space.

This 10-minute tutorial by nature photography site Nature TTL teaches how to create a day to night time-lapse from sunset to a starry night sky. While it can be a tricky technique to pull off, the effects can be totally mesmerizing if done correctly.

Want to experience what it's like to walk in space on the outside of the International Space Station? This 3.5-minute video is the first ever interactive 360-degree video shot in open space.

On September 30th, 2016, the European Space Agency ended the Rosetta space probe's mission by crashing it onto the comet that it had been orbiting for two years. It's been over a year now, but scientists just discovered that Rosetta had sent a surprise final close-up photo of the comet's surface just before impact.

Here's a beautiful new short film by time-lapse photographer Tyler Hulett of Discover Oregon. Titled "Oregon Trails," it shows stacked star trails swirling over the beautiful landscapes of Oregon.

The Sony a7S II has become the first commercial camera to be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station.

Google Street View has just added a tour of the International Space Station. You know... just in case you were taking your next summer holiday there and wanted to plan your sightseeing route through the different modules.

There's a new camera drone floating around on the International Space Station, and it's adorable. Called the Int-Ball, the drone shoots photos of the crew and their activities, freeing up the astronauts to do other work.

Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" (or G.R.S.) is a giant storm on the gas planet that has possibly existed for at least 350 years. NASA's Juno spacecraft flew just 5,600 miles above the storm on Monday, snapping new photos that give us a beautiful view of this famous feature.

Dr. Hersh Chadha is a photographer whose work is literally out of this world. Thanks to a collaboration with printing house Duggal Visual Solutions, Chadha's work is now whizzing around the Earth on the International Space Station in a permanent photography exhibition.

After doing an astrophotography shoot and zooming in on the stars, and you may find digital noise spoiling the scene. Removal in Lightroom can result in less color in the cosmos, but using a piece of software called Starry Landscape Stacker software can make the final output much better.