[HN Gopher] Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021 shortlist im...
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Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021 shortlist images
Author : Tomte
Score : 113 points
Date : 2021-08-02 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| sirnicolaz wrote:
| Nice post, thanks. I am always astonished by the amount of detail
| that a backyard photographer can achieve.
|
| To celebrate these wonders, I have recently created an artwork
| with astrophotography from astrobin.com (really cool amateur
| astrophotography community). Maybe someone in this thread will be
| interested https://www.astrumnft.art The collection relates to
| the 110 astronomic objects of the Messier Catalog.
| dheera wrote:
| Many of these nebulae that people see a lot on the internet are
| actually HUGE in the night sky, contrary to popular
| misconception that you need a Hubble telescope to capture many
| of them. A lot are much larger than a full moon, but just _too
| dim_ for the naked eye to see. I 've been doing a project to
| capture them in context with landscapes around California.
|
| You can get quite a lot of detail with standard camera lenses;
| you just need a dark sky and a star tracker that lets you
| expose for long enough, and a different IR filter that cuts off
| at ~700nm instead of 640nm, so you can get the Hydrogen alpha
| line to pass through (which is actually within the visible
| band, but consumer cameras attenuate it to almost zero).
|
| https://www.instagram.com/dheeranet/
| shagie wrote:
| Backing this up / supporting this, the image of the
| California Nebula is 2.5deg long. That's five moon diameters.
|
| I've got a Nikon 200-500mm lens, which while on the long side
| of lenses most people have, isn't especially hard to get...
| and its easy to get a 500mm f/8 mirror lens (which has the
| same field of view, along with no issues with bokeh for
| astrophotography). With a full frame camera, its field of
| view is 5deg00'. The California Nebula would take half the
| frame. With a DX lens, that would be 3deg10'.
|
| The bigger challenge is the tracking.
|
| Btw, given:
|
| > I've been doing a project to capture them in context with
| landscapes around California.
|
| Have you headed out to the Alabama hills? Yea... its star
| trail photograph rather than specific nebula - http://www.pan
| oscapes.com/showImage.php?partNo=P250H&catNo=7... (its shot a
| 6x17 film camera - each frame is 6cm x 17cm - that's one
| shot; if you look at the full size prints you can see
| airplanes and satellites)
| dheera wrote:
| > Have you headed out to the Alabama hills?
|
| Yes! I have a couple of images coming, one of the Pacman
| nebula and one of the emissive regions of Cygnus, over the
| Alabama Hills. Stay tuned!
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > I've got a Nikon 200-500mm lens, which while on the long
| side of lenses most people have, isn't especially hard to
| get...
|
| True. All you need to do is go online with a credit card.
| The thing is, that's a $1400 lens new that still sells for
| over $1000 used in decent condition. That's a pretty decent
| chunk of change. ;)
| dheera wrote:
| You don't need to spend that much.
|
| Get a used Nikkor ED Ai-S 180/2.8 or a Nikkor ED Ai-S
| 300/4.5 if you want to do the California nebula. Either
| should cost you under $200 if you're patient and good at
| eBay.
|
| The bigger issue for the California nebula (specifically)
| might be that most of its light is at a narrow band of
| 656 nm which gets blocked off by stock consumer cameras;
| you might need to mod your camera's IR filter.
|
| If you want an entry-level target, get either of the
| above lenses and image M31 (Andromeda galaxy) instead,
| which is visually of similar size to the California
| nebula anyway. Andromeda can be imaged easily with an
| unmodified camera. I always recommend Andromeda as a good
| entry level target for people after they've gotten bored
| of the Milky Way.
|
| The most important thing will be to get a tracker, good
| sturdy tripod, and get to a dark place like a national
| park or national forest.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > Nice post, thanks. I am always astonished by the amount of
| detail that a backyard photographer can achieve.
|
| Not only that, but you can achieve some pretty nice results
| with just a DSLR or mirrorless camera, a remote trigger, and a
| tripod. Literally just aiming the camera at something and
| opening the shutter for a few minutes can get you results that,
| while they aren't going to be on par with some of the images
| linked here, are definitely going to be pretty cool looking. A
| lot of the tricks of the trade are really post-production
| techniques, rather than shooting techniques.
|
| Sky & Telescope says it better than I do, but, the TL;DR of
| this comment is "you don't need a lot of equipment, and it's
| not hard to get started."
|
| https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/deep-sky-wit...
| mszcz wrote:
| Does anyone know if these are available for download/purchase at
| higher resolutions? I'd love to have those as wallpapers.
| godelski wrote:
| Looks like some of them are. I took my favorite and just
| searched the title and author and found the flickr page[0]
|
| [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/terryhancock/51278623160
| mszcz wrote:
| Oh, this is wonderful, thank you!
| z3t4 wrote:
| It would not surprise me if half the images are "photoshopped" by
| merging one image with another. The only one that looks real is
| the Buck Moon.
| xondono wrote:
| It's likely that some of them are constructed through
| "stacking". The technique is easy to pull off, with software
| built for that specific purpose.
|
| You take your N long exposures, and then have the program map
| the movement of stars around you during those (if you do 20 30s
| exposures, you've spent ~10 minutes on it, so the stars will
| have shifted). Then the program corrects that motion and sums
| the images. It's a cheaper and easier way to "simulate" a
| longer exposure, that would require a tracking system
| otherwise.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| This is neat: some Pentax cameras that have GPS, a compass,
| and most importantly a sensor attached to small motors that
| allow it to move inside the camera (normally used for in-body
| image stabilization), _also_ can compensate for the movement
| of stars in a photo by rotating the sensor to keep the stars
| stationary relative to the camera. The GPS is needed to tell
| how the stars overhead will actually rotate.
|
| I assume that this means that anything stationary on the
| earth will be blurred instead, but still very cool.
| weego wrote:
| That's just the nature of astronomy photography. Often hundreds
| of photos are stiched to make the final image. For some
| subjects and shots it's the only possible way it can work.
| ekianjo wrote:
| yeah stacking is not photography anymore tbh. its more editing
| than anuthing else and the sky looks nothing like these
| pictures if you do not use such techniques.
| hmsshagatsea wrote:
| I gotta see that hoodoo
| pugworthy wrote:
| I'm continually amazed at the detail people are able to pull out
| of backyard telescopes. Some of the nebula shots look like Hubble
| pictures.
| Gimpei wrote:
| Agreed these are spectacular. A lot of these pictures are very
| wide frame shots, so Hubble level magnification isn't really
| necessary. Instead you need a good camera, mount, atmospheric
| conditions, and some serious Photoshop chops. I tried to get
| into astrophotography a while back and was amazed by it's
| complexity!
| dheera wrote:
| So the Hubble is good at extracting huge amounts of detail from
| small objects in the night sky, but what most people don't know
| is that the sky is also filled with nearby (in astronomical
| terms) objects that are HUGE, and fairly easy to capture with
| backyard equipment.
|
| For example, Andromeda is 6 times the visual size of the moon,
| the Rosette nebula is over twice the visual size of the moon,
| and so on.
|
| The only reason you don't see them that way is that they are
| too dim. I've been doing a project to capture them in context
| of landscapes to rectify this misconception.
|
| We would be able to see things like this if only our eyes were
| more sensitive. All of my images were taken with DSLR lenses,
| not even a telescope.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/dheeranet/
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Wow those are really pretty. If it's not too much to ask,
| could you briefly outline what's involved in making such
| beautiful images? What kinda gear? Are you adding colour and
| things post?
| dheera wrote:
| Gear:
|
| - Normal DSLR camera with the IR filter taken out and a
| different (~700nm cutoff) IR filter put in -- you don't
| need this for broadband objects like galaxies but for
| emission nebulae that have a lot of 656nm light, it helps a
| lot. For some emission nebulae I use an dual-narrowband
| (H-alpha and O-III lines) filter.
|
| - Some pretty normal camera lenses. Actually mostly 30-40
| year old manual focus lenses that are built much better
| than today's plastic crap and easier to focus properly. I
| highly recommend the Nikkor ED Ai-S 180/2.8 and Nikkor ED
| Ai-S IF 300/4.5 if you want a couple of winners.
|
| - A sturdy tripod that won't vibrate in the wind. Heavier
| the better. None of that carbon fiber BS. Steel is good.
| Video camera tripods work well.
|
| - Tracking mount, such as an iOptron Skyguider Pro in my
| case.
|
| All of the images I take are as close to natural color as I
| can make them, since landscapes in false color aren't
| exactly good looking. Most Hubble images on the other hand
| are false-color, and for a good reason: The Hydrogen and
| Sulfur lines both fall in the red, so in order to be able
| to visually distinguish the chemical processes they assign
| S to red, H to green, O to blue. This is commonly called
| the "Hubble palette". In my case O spans green-blue and S/H
| are both in the red, and although you can't really
| distinguish S from H in my pictures, but that's how they
| would look if our eyes were more sensitive.
| theelous3 wrote:
| yo, your shots are gorgeous! Thank you for this. Do you have
| them anywhere that isn't ig?
| dheera wrote:
| Yes! https://dheera.net/photos/calnight/
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Is it just me, or does the California Nebula not really look at
| all like the outline of California?
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