How to Take Astrophotography

Astrophotography Tips (Part 1)

Whether you want to fill your Instagram page with some new content or just wanting to test out your new camera with a unique experience. The AstroReality team has a lot of photographers within our company and also very passionate space enthusiasts. Here are the very basics for time-lapse astrophotography tutorials for you.

Credit to James Li, co-founder of AstroReality

Choosing Your Spot and Subject

What’s so special about your location if you are trying to take a picture of the stars? Aren’t you just supposed to look up and take a picture? As a photographer myself, I have found that to create an image that is unique as well as informative it’s essential to consider all of the factors involved. First is your l0cation, are you going to be in the mountains? What about the desert? Or the way that I like to do it is right out my backyard.

To get the most effective, shot all three of these locations can work. But the best is to get away from light pollution. What is light pollution? Light pollution is where you have a lot of human activity or street lamps that are going to affect your final picture. Typically in photos, you don’t need to worry about this sort of thing, and can often add a lot of exciting lighting options but to capture the sky they get in the way and often ruin an otherwise great picture.

So its best to look for locations, that are not nearby humanity. Unfortunately, because of that, you are going to need to be prepared. So you need to have something warm to wear, something that is great to snack on and also bring some flashlights. You can try and do some light painting with the torches, but they are mainly there so that you want to watch your step where ever you are going at night.

Preparing and Bringing Your Equipment

While you don’t need a multi-thousand dollar camera, an astrophotography camera can be any standard DSLR camera. Which enables you to be able to directly adjust the shutter speed as well as adjust the f-stop on the camera as well. Technically you can do this with your phone camera but because the lens on the device is limited in the glass and sensor size the images will naturally not come out like you are expecting or thinking about in your head. So best to get a DSLR.  The next item is to get is a sturdy tripod. Tripod because a monopod requires you to hold the camera steady and unfortunately we all do not have surgeon’s hands.

Credit to James Li, co-founder of AstroReality

The Technical Details and the Reality of the Shoot

NASA space photos take a lot of time to capture and then edit. But if you are looking to get close. Here is a basic checklist to have:

• ISO set between 1600- and max try and go as low as possible to get the maximum quality but recognize with more noize there is more light and finding a balance depending upon your environment is liable to change.
• F stop 10- 22 you are looking for maximized details here, so the f stop needs to be as narrow as possible.
• I’d expect you to take pictures that are between 10 seconds to 20 seconds each.  Depending upon your camera you can switch it to HDR mode which is preferred which will take amazing space photos by capturing those images in succession, your camera will most likely process the photos together and generate a compiled image of all of the images captured during the HDR processing.

The AstroReality Way of Getting the Best Images of Planets 

“Setting up your scene with our models!” 

Sure you could go out and buy the best telescope for astrophotography or even a beginner astrophotographer telescope. But the best way to get a coveted-in camera image of a planet or the moon is to buy an AstroReality Moon model, then create your own little studio in the comfort of your own home and snap away. AstroReality’s Moon models and Planet models are the most accurate printed models ever made of the planets and are an excellent way to test out your new camera.