17 things that I did in the last year that improved my astrophotography.
Hi, I am an amateur astrophotographer. I have spent about 10 years doddling with it, even taking a 3-year break during the pandemic due to work commitments. I came back to it in spring of 2023 and found a different world in astrophotography that I had remembered.
My reality is that I image from my backyard in a suburban area. My sky is Bortle 7 to 8. Lots of light pollution. I am surrounded to the North by our local Costco, to the East by about 10 car and heavy equipment dealership and to the South by the light dome of city center. Thank goodness for understanding neighbors that turn off their back porch light whenever the weirdo next door is out with his telescope.E
Even with these conditions, I enjoy capturing and processing my images to the best of my ability.Here are the 17 best things that I did in the last year to greatly improve my astrophotography (not in order).
1) Switch to N.I.N.A. for image capture. This is a great piece of software and once you learn it, it can be a real satisfying experience. It simplifies the meridian flip. The plate solving is a real game changer.
2) Never image lower than 35° above the East/West horizon. In my case, there is too much light pollution the closer I go to the horizon and it is just a waste of my time. This means that I have to image 2 to 3 targets in one session and do it several nights in a row.
3) Try to gather as much data as you can on a single target. I aim to gather a minimum of 4 hours and will do 10 hours if I can – weather dependent. This improves both the signal and the details that can be captured.
4) Understand the pixel ratio of your telescope / camera setup. That ratio can be calculated by (pixel size of the camera / focal length of the telescope) x 206.265). This gives you the Arcsecond per pixel of your setup. Anything between 0.7 and 2 (in my case) is good. These numbers will change for you depending on your location and local seeing conditions. But in my case, lower than 0.7 is oversampling (bloated stars, loss of detail) and anything over 2 is undersampling (blocky stars). This simple calculation determines if you should be binning or not. A good site to get more information is www.astronomy.tools. This calculation applies to both the imaging setup, but also the guiding setup as well.
5) Do a good polar alignment. I am to the sub-arcminute for polar alignment. Does a great improvement to you autoguiding. I went from 3-4 arcsecond autoguiding to 0.5 arcsecond autoguiding. At long focal lengths, it makes a world of difference.
6) Always match your autoguider scope to your imaging scope. The unwritten rule is never use a guide scope with shorter focal length 10x less than the imaging scope. I try to aim at 5x or less. For example, my RC is 1625mm focal length. My guiding scope is 430mm focal length, or 3.78x.
7) Really understand Pixinsight. Will anybody ever really understand Pixinsight – I doubt it. However, it is important to understand the processes that I typically use for both pre and post processing.
8) Really understand the color wheel and different color combinations – interactions between one color and another. We deal with colors and transparencies. Sometimes leading to ugly images. It is useful to improve on color theory. For example to get rid of green – remove a combination of yellow and cyan (which makes green when mixed together). Also add a little magenta, which is the opposite of green and cancels it out to a point.
9) Really understand stretching and curves, especially the concept of overstretching (too much signal) and clipping (loss of signal). GHS in Pixinsight is a great help for this.
10) Learn to trouble-shoot. I have spent my share of nights at -20°C freezing in the dark cold wondering why my autoguider would not talk to my computer, or why the plate solving was not working, or why my telescope would overshoot and crash into my mount. Same in the summer at +30°C, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. The lesson here is to have patience and try to trouble-shoot items one at a time. It could be the wrong parameter in the software, a faulty cable, a bad power supply, etc... We all have been there.
11) It is not the equipment you have, it is what you do with it. Except for 2 exceptions, all my gear is about 10 years old. Most of it was bought used. Still going strong and I plan on to keep working with it until it fails or becomes unusable.
12) Know your targets and use the correct telescope to capture it. I have 3 main imaging scopes: A refractor with 430 mm focal length f/6. I use it for large targets like the Rosette or the Heart nebula. My second is an 8-inch Newtonian 800 mm at f/4 for middle range objects. I don’t like to use this one because my subs end up to be about 15 seconds on LRGB. My last one is a Ritchey Chretien at 1625 mm focal length at f/8, which I use for deep sky objects. I too have suffered from aperture fever and bought a lot of gear which ended up in the corner, unused. I have settled on the 3 telescopes listed above as a good all-around compromise to capture all of the targets that I want to capture.
13) Because of light pollution, I turn to Narrowband Imaging a lot as I get better results. During galaxy season, I don’t have any choice than to do LRGB. I sometimes use my old trusty Canon 60D (unmodified).
14) Scope out your targets. Use these atlas – you might find a little known NGC or Sharpless object that most people miss. Use programs like Stellarium. Use sites like Telescopius that allow you to visualize your target with your telescope / camera combination. Do your research and get better results.
15) Learn to no overdo it in processing. Sometimes less is more. Learn to say – this is enough, I am satisfied with the result, let’s move on.
16) Always, always, always capture flats and darks for every session. It makes a world of difference in the processing and error correction and gradient removal.
17) Enjoy yourself. Have fun with it.
This hobby is not for the faint of heart, but it is very rewarding.
Hi, I am an amateur astrophotographer. I have spent about 10 years doddling with it, even taking a 3-year break during the pandemic due to work commitments. I came back to it in spring of 2023 and found a different world in astrophotography that I had remembered.
My reality is that I image from my backyard in a suburban area. My sky is Bortle 7 to 8. Lots of light pollution. I am surrounded to the North by our local Costco, to the East by about 10 car and heavy equipment dealership and to the South by the light dome of city center. Thank goodness for understanding neighbors that turn off their back porch light whenever the weirdo next door is out with his telescope.E
Even with these conditions, I enjoy capturing and processing my images to the best of my ability.Here are the 17 best things that I did in the last year to greatly improve my astrophotography (not in order).
1) Switch to N.I.N.A. for image capture. This is a great piece of software and once you learn it, it can be a real satisfying experience. It simplifies the meridian flip. The plate solving is a real game changer.
2) Never image lower than 35° above the East/West horizon. In my case, there is too much light pollution the closer I go to the horizon and it is just a waste of my time. This means that I have to image 2 to 3 targets in one session and do it several nights in a row.
3) Try to gather as much data as you can on a single target. I aim to gather a minimum of 4 hours and will do 10 hours if I can – weather dependent. This improves both the signal and the details that can be captured.
4) Understand the pixel ratio of your telescope / camera setup. That ratio can be calculated by (pixel size of the camera / focal length of the telescope) x 206.265). This gives you the Arcsecond per pixel of your setup. Anything between 0.7 and 2 (in my case) is good. These numbers will change for you depending on your location and local seeing conditions. But in my case, lower than 0.7 is oversampling (bloated stars, loss of detail) and anything over 2 is undersampling (blocky stars). This simple calculation determines if you should be binning or not. A good site to get more information is www.astronomy.tools. This calculation applies to both the imaging setup, but also the guiding setup as well.
5) Do a good polar alignment. I am to the sub-arcminute for polar alignment. Does a great improvement to you autoguiding. I went from 3-4 arcsecond autoguiding to 0.5 arcsecond autoguiding. At long focal lengths, it makes a world of difference.
6) Always match your autoguider scope to your imaging scope. The unwritten rule is never use a guide scope with shorter focal length 10x less than the imaging scope. I try to aim at 5x or less. For example, my RC is 1625mm focal length. My guiding scope is 430mm focal length, or 3.78x.
7) Really understand Pixinsight. Will anybody ever really understand Pixinsight – I doubt it. However, it is important to understand the processes that I typically use for both pre and post processing.
8) Really understand the color wheel and different color combinations – interactions between one color and another. We deal with colors and transparencies. Sometimes leading to ugly images. It is useful to improve on color theory. For example to get rid of green – remove a combination of yellow and cyan (which makes green when mixed together). Also add a little magenta, which is the opposite of green and cancels it out to a point.
9) Really understand stretching and curves, especially the concept of overstretching (too much signal) and clipping (loss of signal). GHS in Pixinsight is a great help for this.
10) Learn to trouble-shoot. I have spent my share of nights at -20°C freezing in the dark cold wondering why my autoguider would not talk to my computer, or why the plate solving was not working, or why my telescope would overshoot and crash into my mount. Same in the summer at +30°C, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. The lesson here is to have patience and try to trouble-shoot items one at a time. It could be the wrong parameter in the software, a faulty cable, a bad power supply, etc... We all have been there.
11) It is not the equipment you have, it is what you do with it. Except for 2 exceptions, all my gear is about 10 years old. Most of it was bought used. Still going strong and I plan on to keep working with it until it fails or becomes unusable.
12) Know your targets and use the correct telescope to capture it. I have 3 main imaging scopes: A refractor with 430 mm focal length f/6. I use it for large targets like the Rosette or the Heart nebula. My second is an 8-inch Newtonian 800 mm at f/4 for middle range objects. I don’t like to use this one because my subs end up to be about 15 seconds on LRGB. My last one is a Ritchey Chretien at 1625 mm focal length at f/8, which I use for deep sky objects. I too have suffered from aperture fever and bought a lot of gear which ended up in the corner, unused. I have settled on the 3 telescopes listed above as a good all-around compromise to capture all of the targets that I want to capture.
13) Because of light pollution, I turn to Narrowband Imaging a lot as I get better results. During galaxy season, I don’t have any choice than to do LRGB. I sometimes use my old trusty Canon 60D (unmodified).
14) Scope out your targets. Use these atlas – you might find a little known NGC or Sharpless object that most people miss. Use programs like Stellarium. Use sites like Telescopius that allow you to visualize your target with your telescope / camera combination. Do your research and get better results.
15) Learn to no overdo it in processing. Sometimes less is more. Learn to say – this is enough, I am satisfied with the result, let’s move on.
16) Always, always, always capture flats and darks for every session. It makes a world of difference in the processing and error correction and gradient removal.
17) Enjoy yourself. Have fun with it.
This hobby is not for the faint of heart, but it is very rewarding.
