Can anyone guide me how to take beautiful pictures of stars in the sky?

Hi @williamocasio , 

The most essential piece of equipment for astrophotography is a star tracker mount. It will allow you to take multiple long exposures (30"+) of the sky over the night.

Naturally, it is advisable to have a lense with at least 135 mm focal lenght, to shoot large objects like Andromeda galaxy, or Orion nebula. But even with a wide angle lense (16 mm, 35 mm etc), you will get excellent shots of Milky Way galaxy. 

Then you will need to learn how to stack and process these images. Youtube is full of very high quality tutorials for the beginners and people on this site are always ready to help with an advise. 

Clear skies and good luck!

Hi @williamocasio , 

I totally agree with the answers above. The "Nebula Photos" youtube channel is a real good starting point. Nico explains things in a very detailed way and he has done his research very well. He is also a great astro photographer himself and I really like the way he is explaining things.

For me, there is only one thing to add. Even if you understand the basics well, there will me so much stuff left where you will run into problems. You have to be patient and you have to take your time while imaging. If you then have a specific problem, come back and we'll help you with that.  Explaining the whole basics is a bit much to write about. The handbook of astro photography may have thousands of pages. But maybe, we could suggest an order of things for you to look for. This is mine:

1) using a camera (with a lens) and a tripod (as "Nebula Photos" suggests) for imaging the night sky (look for things like "long exposures", "rule of 500th" or "star trails")
2) star trackers and how they work (big mounts are basically the same thing)
3) generate calibration frames and stacking images (with Deep sky stacker or similar)
4) using a telescope (on your mount) and adapting your camera to it

I guess if you made it up to this point, you have enough experience to select the next things yourself...

There may be other users that correct this order, but for me this worked so far.

Clear Skies

Christian

Besides the videos, also take a look at this book,  The Deep Sky Imaging Primer by Charles Bracken.  It is easy to read and provides clear explanations as to the equipment and processing steps involved for astrophotography.

Hello and welcome to the hobby

I see people have recommended "Nebula Photos" and I will add myself to that recommendation.  He is very informative on entry level gear and techniques.  If you plan to use any lenses in the slightly higher focal length ranges, a sky tracker will be a necessity.  

But to give it a go before investing in a tracker with your camera and lenses of shorter focal lengths, taking Milkyway photos is quite easy with a little practice.  To do this all you need is the camera/lens and a tripod.  I would highly recommend the app: Photopills.  Within this app, there are all kinds of helpful tools, but the one I use all the time is the "Spot Stars" tool.  You can plug your camera in and the desired focal length you are using, or thinking of maybe using and it will tell you the longest exposure you can take (with no tracking) before star trails start to appear.  This allows you to take nice, pinpoint stars (or have it set to "barely noticeable trails" for slightly longer exposures).  Just remember when shooting at whatever shutter speed, to keep your eye on that histogram, you don't want it shifting too far to the right, I aim for about 1/3 from the left.  You can change the aperture or ISO settings to achieve this.  When done with a night of imaging, you can then take however many sub exposures you took, plug them into a program like Deepsky Stacker, and do some post processing work in apps like Photoshop, and make beautiful Milkyway photos. 

If/when you are ready to take the financial leap into tracked photography, there are many entry level ones, I personally use the Skyguider Pro for my portable rig with great results.  Or move onto even larger rigs that have higher payload capacities, go-to functionality, and guiding to take even longer exposures.  But be careful as @Steven de Vet  said... This hobby is a rabbit hole, and you can find yourself spending many thousands of dollars on gear.  

You can also look at youtube channels: Astrobackyard and Peter Zelinka for information as well.

I am still new to this hobby as well, but I hope you find it as fun and rewarding as I do!
Below is my Milkyway image from Alton Lake in the Boundary Waters, a bortle 1 area.  It was just a single 60 second exposure on my Skyguider Pro and the Cygnus Loop Region through a 50mm Lens in a bortle 4 area, which was a single 180 second exposure on my iOptron GEM28.

So a lot is possible when the total integration is not that long from dark skies

Milkyway over Alton Lake MN

Veil Region of Cygnus

I hope you stick with the hobby and that this was somewhat helpful!

Enjoy the nights

-Chase

I just wanted to say that this will be a journey.  It's not all about fantastic equipment and upgrades.  Start with a basic setup, learn the trade and only upgrade when you really need to.  Here are some photos all taken with the same telescope, tripod and mount which my wife bought me as a birthday present.

First photo I posted on Facebook (M81):


Then, having spent a few weeks learning about stuff, this was my second of the same target:


Andromeda (M31) is always a good target (taken with a Sony NEX 5N on the same scope)


I took this one this week with the same equipment of a much fainter object (the crescent nebula).  One thing to note about stars is that they are not all the same colour ... they are the jewels in the sky.  As such, making sure you don't get them overexposed and all turning out white is important:


I still have a lot to learn, but what I have learned is that once you have a basic level of astrophotography equipment then most of it is about skill and experience rather than the kit itself.  To get started I would suggest:

* Spending money on the mount/tripod ... a mount that can be controlled from a computer (using ASCOM) lets you find things and lets you track the sky.
* The scope itself doesn't have to be that expensive (mine is a £380 8" Newtonian)
* Autoguiding will be essential for any of the nebula stuff.  A basic autoguider will do a great job and won't cost the earth
* I got great photos using an old mirrorless camera connected to the scope; mine had to be manually triggered which meant I spent hours outside in the cold.  I suggest if you go down that route you look for an old Canon DSLR that can be remotely controlled by a computer.

Good luck with the hobby and hope you enjoy it as much as the rest of us.

If you really want to photograph stars (not nebulae, galaxies, planets or other flat objects), I have a tip for a nice effect: Put a diffusion filter in front of the lens. This will make the stars bigger, more colorful and "more beautiful". Also you can see the constellations better. 
On this website you can see the effect.

Bruce Donzanti:
Besides the videos, also take a look at this book,  The Deep Sky Imaging Primer by Charles Bracken.  It is easy to read and provides clear explanations as to the equipment and processing steps involved for astrophotography.

Agreed. Easy to read and comprehensive. A great place to start..≥

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"
"Practice, practice, practice!"

While I agree with a lot that has been said before - in particular the recommendations of Nebula Photos, Astrobackyard and Charles Bracken - for a complete beginner to photography I would strongly recommend to first learn the most important aspects of photography:
1) Learn the ins and outs of your equipment. You don't want to find yourself in a dark location figuring out why your equipment doesn't work as you expect.
2) It may be considered part of step 1) but practising proper manual exposure, handling long exposure times and how your camera performs at different ISO values and in different temperature ranges is a must.
3) Study and practice the fundamentals of image composition. As long as you don't manage to create well composed daytime images, you have little chance to  come up with good wide field astrophotos
4) Get acquainted with image processing and not to forget with organizing your photos in a structured way. Get used to backing up your photos regularily. Over  a lifetime you're going to take a lot of them and losing important ones is painful. 

Just like some others I would recommend to first start with a tripod - buy the best one you can afford. Learn to photograph untracked nightscapes and take it from there. Milky Way, Constellations and Meteor Showers are a good way to start. 

Once you're ready to move on to deep sky objects I recommend the books "Astrophotography on the go" by Joseph Ashley and "50 best Astrophotography Targets for Beginners" by Alan Hall. The first one discusses all aspects on how to get into astrophotography in case you don't have an own backyard observatory. The second one is a very practice oriented guide to some worthwhile targets. In particular I like that the author shows how a single image of the target looks like. While this obviously heavily depends on the specific setup and conditions, it helps to manage expectations of a beginner.

Concerning the most important piece of equipment I still believe strongly in the recommendation of German wildlife photographer Fritz Pölking: "The most important piece of equipment is a waste basket to dump your bad photos". In the digital age you even get it for free! Learning means trying to improve and you only improve by acquiring good and useful habits. Trying to rescue half-baked photos by digital (over-)processing is not helpful on the long run. 

Have fun and clear skies
Wolfgang