The Art of Astrophotography

A Guide To Shooting the Milky Way

Introduction

Welcome to the wonderful world of astrophotography. I first began my journey over 5 years ago, when I saw these amazing images of earthly landscapes beneath endless starry skies posted online as part of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Since then, I have spent many hours under the stars attempting to perfect my skills in one of the most frustrating forms of photography there is…and I don’t think I ever will perfect my skills, as I find myself continually learning every time I go out. Planning, patience and persistence are the name of the game – believe me, some of my planned shots have taken me over a year to get right. Constant obstacles, from bad weather and bad timing to landslides and equipment failures, all make it a very frustrating pursuit. But in the end, after all the failures, when you finally do nail the shot, it then becomes one of the most rewarding forms of photography there is. This is a general guide of how I personally go about my astrophotography. There are numerous additional techniques out there, including tracking, stacking and dark frame extraction workflows. Personally, I don’t use any of those techniques so won’t be covering them here, but you’ll find plenty of information about them on the web.

Moon Silhouettes took over a year to get it right – I had so many failed attempts, but in the end the results were highly rewarding!

Types of Astrophotography Photography

There are various types of astrophotography one can pursue.

Deep space – images which are taken with use of a telescope of objects beyond our own solar system. These are those stunning images you see of distant galaxies and nebulae, and this is the most technical and hardest form of astrophotography.

– images which are taken with use of a telescope of objects beyond our own solar system. These are those stunning images you see of distant galaxies and nebulae, and this is the most technical and hardest form of astrophotography. Solar System – these are images of the planets, moons and the sun of our own solar system. Again the images are mostly photographed through telescopes, but a super telephoto lens on a DSLR cameras can also give you a good result.

– these are images of the planets, moons and the sun of our own solar system. Again the images are mostly photographed through telescopes, but a super telephoto lens on a DSLR cameras can also give you a good result. Wide Field Astrophotography – this is astrophotography that is taken with a DSLR camera and lens with a wide field of view, i.e. wide angled lens. These are the images you see that include a starry sky or star trails above a landscape. This is the most accessible form of astrophotography , and are the kind I practice and will be teaching you about.

– this is astrophotography that is taken with a DSLR camera and lens with a wide field of view, i.e. wide angled lens. These are the images you see that include a starry sky or star trails above a landscape. This is the most accessible form of astrophotography and are the kind I practice and will be teaching you about. Time-lapse Astrophotography – is just an extension on Wide Field Astrophotography. The only difference is you take lots of exposures over time and then combine the frames to make a time-lapse video. The same technique can be used to make a star trail image.

Castlepoint Dreaming by Mark Gee on 500px Wide Field Astrophotography taken with a DSLR Camera and a wide angled lens marries landscapes and the night sky together.

Equipment

In the modern age of digital photography, wide field astrophotography is now within almost anyone’s reach. Equipment-wise, all you need is a modern DSLR camera with good low light capabilities, a fast lens and a good sturdy tripod. This will get you out there taking good quality night sky images.

Beyond that you can also add to the kit with additional accessories that will allow you to do a little more, like an intervalometer, which will allow you to do time-lapses and star trails. Of course you can go out and accumulate a whole lot of other specialised equipment, like equatorial mounts which follow rotation of the night sky, and robotic camera mounts for capturing large panoramic images, but for now we’ll concentrate on the basics.

This image was shot with a Gigapan Epic Pro robotic camera mount. It’s made up of 35 individual images which are stitched together, making the final image a 126 megapixel image.



Photographing in Low Level Light

Locking it down – with any form of astrophotography, you will be dealing with long exposures. This means for best results you need to eliminate any camera movement or vibration. The obvious way to do this is to mount your camera on a sturdy tripod. But there are other issues which cause movement and vibration when using your camera. The first one is that by simply pressing the shutter button you are possibly causing the camera to move slightly, even when mounted on a sturdy tripod. You probably won’t notice this movement in your wide field astrophotography images, but if you are trying to photograph the moon with a telephoto lens, even the smallest of movements will be amplified and noticeable in your images. The best way to resolve this is to either use a shutter release cable mirror lock function

– with any form of astrophotography, you will be dealing with long exposures. This means for best results you need to eliminate any camera movement or vibration. The obvious way to do this is to mount your camera on a sturdy tripod. But there are other issues which cause movement and vibration when using your camera. The first one is that by simply pressing the shutter button you are possibly causing the camera to move slightly, even when mounted on a sturdy tripod. You probably won’t notice this movement in your wide field astrophotography images, but if you are trying to photograph the moon with a telephoto lens, even the smallest of movements will be amplified and noticeable in your images. The best way to resolve this is to either use a Find your framing – when you go out to shoot the night sky, you are going to be somewhere quite dark, unless you’re shooting around the city or during a full moon. So framing your shot won’t be as easy as just looking through the viewfinder and lining something up like you do in daylight. The best way to go about this is to use your own eyes to find an area of sky and landscape that you think will make a good composition , and line the camera up in that general direction. You’ll then have to do test shots so you can see on the lcd on the back of the camera what you are actually capturing. It will probably take a few goes of moving the camera around on the tripod to find something interesting that will work for you. Sometimes it takes me up to 30 minutes to set the camera up and get the exact composition I want, so make sure you allow for composition set up time in your planning.

– when you go out to shoot the night sky, you are going to be somewhere quite dark, unless you’re shooting around the city or during a full moon. So framing your shot won’t be as easy as just looking through the viewfinder and lining something up like you do in daylight. The best way to go about this is to use your own eyes to find an area of sky and landscape that you think will make a and line the camera up in that general direction. You’ll then have to do test shots so you can see on the lcd on the back of the camera what you are actually capturing. It will probably take a few goes of moving the camera around on the tripod to find something interesting that will work for you. Sometimes it takes me up to 30 minutes to set the camera up and get the exact composition I want, so make sure you allow for composition set up time in your planning. Focusing – getting your focus correct is critical in any form of photography. In astrophotography this process is made even harder due to the lack of light to auto focus with. So how do you focus to get sharp images at night time? Well there’s a couple of ways to go about it. In all forms of astrophotography you will always shoot in manual focus mode and be setting your focus to as close to infinity , so your distant landscape and/or night sky will be at hyperfocal distance loupe

Looking up at the Cape Palliser lighthouse with the Milky Way above. I shot this with a 14mm lens set with the focus manually set to infinity. The image has a relatively large depth of field due to the short hyperfocal distance that you get with the 14mm lens.



Planning for Astrophotography

Planning is one of the most important things to do when going out to shoot the night sky. You could go out there and photograph without some kind of planning, but it’s always a good idea to know your locations beforehand, and what you plan to shoot. I always have an idea in my head of what I want to shoot before I go out. I certainly don’t get exactly what I had planned every time I go out. Sometimes I come home with nothing worth looking at, and other times I manage to capture a great image that is totally different to what I planned in the first place.

Location – I have a list of favorite locations around my local area that have served me well over the last few years with my astrophotography. I found a lot of these locations by either seeing photos of the location on the internet, or by searching on google maps. I always go to a location I’ve never been to in the daytime first, as it’s almost impossible to scout around a dark location at night.

I have a list of favorite locations around my local area that have served me well over the last few years with my astrophotography. I found a lot of these locations by either seeing photos of the location on the internet, or by searching on google maps. I always go to a location I’ve never been to in the daytime first, as it’s almost impossible to scout around a dark location at night. Knowing where the stars are – part of planning for astrophotography is knowing where the part of the sky is you want to shoot, and how that lines up with your planned composition. Our own planet is rotating at 1000 miles per hour and is also hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour! So as you can imagine, the night sky is constantly moving, with the position of the stars and The Milky Way constantly changing throughout the year. So it’s important that you know where the Milky Way is going to be in the night sky when you are heading out to photograph it. There are a few apps for your smart phone to help with this planning, and one I have been using now for a while is called Starwalk

part of planning for astrophotography is knowing where the part of the sky is you want to shoot, and how that lines up with your planned composition. Our own planet is rotating at 1000 miles per hour and is also hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour! So as you can imagine, the night sky is constantly moving, with the position of the stars and The Milky Way constantly changing throughout the year. So it’s important that you know where the Milky Way is going to be in the night sky when you are heading out to photograph it. There are a few apps for your smart phone to help with this planning, and one I have been using now for a while is called Shooting for the moon – You may have seen my Full Moon Silhouettes The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) PhotoPills using PhotoPills here

Another planned pano – I wanted to capture the entire visible Milky Way in this shot and the two Magellanic Clouds. It took over 30 minutes to shoot the 56 images that make up this pano and a lot of work to stitch all those images together!



Settings

With all forms of astrophotography you will need to shoot manually on all your settings. This is because the camera will not be able to correctly evaluate the automatic settings with the available light at night time. Doing this will also give you consistency across your astro shots. I’ll go through these settings below, as well as the factors to consider for each.

Photographing people against a starry sky can certainly look impressive – the trick is you need your subjects to stand still for at least as long as your exposure – in this case, I was the person who had to sit still for 30 seconds.

Composition

With wide field astrophotography, no matter how spectacular the night sky is, marrying the landscape with the sky in an aesthetic way is a must if you want to end up with an image that stands out from others. With the correct settings, anyone can point a camera and take an ok picture of the night sky. But the difference between an ok picture and a great picture is usually composition. Composition is something that can come naturally to people who have an artistic eye, but others struggle to grasp it and cannot see a good composition even when it’s right in front of them. Thankfully there are simple rules to help those who can’t easily see a good composition, and if you are aware of and plan your shots around these rules, then composition may start to come more naturally to you. Below are just a few of these rules.

The Rule of Thirds – it’s a rule based on breaking an image down into thirds, both vertically and horizontally. The idea is that you place your point of interest on one of the intersections of these thirds to give you a pleasing composition.

– it’s a rule based on breaking an image down into thirds, both vertically and horizontally. The idea is that you place your point of interest on one of the intersections of these thirds to give you a pleasing composition. Points of Interest – An image without a point of interest will not hold the viewer’s attention for long. It could be something as simple as a tree in the foreground silhouetted by the night sky, or the Milky Way hanging low over the horizon of mountainous landscape.

– An image without a point of interest will not hold the viewer’s attention for long. It could be something as simple as a tree in the foreground silhouetted by the night sky, or the Milky Way hanging low over the horizon of mountainous landscape. Make sure your horizon is straight – unless you are deliberately going for a dutch tilt

Good composition is the key to any kind of photography. This image was shortlisted for the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year due to its pleasing juxtaposition between the foreground tree and The Milky Way.

Digital Processing

Update: Check out my video tutorial on how I process an image in Lightroom. It’s part of a time-lapse tutorial but the principles and techniques are exactly the same as the would be when processing a single image: https://youtu.be/BZD8KxkITw0?t=8m20s

Before we had digital cameras, photos were processed in the dark room with chemicals and photographic paper. Now in the digital age, that processing is done on the computer.

It’s certainly not exactly the same kind of processing, but you can use old darkroom processing techniques like dodging and burning in the computer. Software like Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture can also give you a lot more freedom with your processing techniques, especially when you are using the raw image format.

This is great for astrophotography, as it can give you a lot of control over your image. But it can also be a double edged sword, and personally I find some of the processing of wide field astro images out there a little over the top. I like to keep my astro images as natural as possible, and process them according to my interpretation of how I saw the scene on the night.

This includes making sure my white balance is relatively neutral, and not pushing the clarity too much, leaving halos on every edge, or crushing the blacks so much that there is no image information left in them. To the untrained eye, you might never see that there is an issue, but it is important when producing good quality astro photos that you keep your processing in check. All of this boils down to good in camera techniques, so really all there should be to do when you come to process your astro photos is to get your white balance in order, correct the exposure if need be, set your white point, add some contrast and control your noise with noise reduction. Much beyond this, and you may find your image begins to fall apart with processing artifacts.

In the end, processing is very personal and the style of your processed image will vary from one person to another. I’m just giving you my personal view, and some of the things you should look out for.

Before and after processing. The image above is the raw image straight out of camera with no processing at all. The image below has been processed in Lightroom. I try to my processing as natural as possible without going too over the top.

And as a final word, we can’t get amazing night sky images when it is affected by light pollution, so as my contribution to International Dark Sky Week, I thought one of the best ways to educate people about light pollution would be to show them the difference between a light polluted city sky and a dark sky with little or no light pollution. I used time-lapse photography to demonstrate this, and spent many hours in different lighting conditions capturing the footage. Enjoy the video and feel free to spread the word!

If you’re also looking for my comprehensive time-lapse video tutorial, then you’ve come to the right place – just play the video below.

After Dark from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

City Lights To Dark Skies – International Dark Sky Week 2014 from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

The Art of Night – 2014 The Year That Was from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

The Art of Night from Mark Gee on Vimeo.