For all of human history people have looked up at the night sky and contemplated Life, the universe, and everything. Space is the last frontier man has yet to explore. There is a mystery out there, and all you have to do to remind yourself of that is to look up at the night sky. And it is no surprise that photographers want to capture the beauty and mystique of the night sky. In fact one of my most favorite types of photography is astro photography.
What Is Astro-Photography
Astrophotography is just a fancy name for taking pictures of the night sky. But you can create some absolutely spectacular images of the night sky. We Earthlings are fortunate have a first class window to the entire universe right above our heads. But it is hard to see everything out there like nebula’s, comets, and planets, because they are so faint and far away that it is really hard to see them with the naked eye. But a camera opens up a whole new world of possibilities to see and capture all the amazing things that is happening just beyond our little planet.
This guide will teach you how to get a great picture of the night sky, when is the best time of the year to do it, where you should go to find some dark skies, and what camera gear will give you the best possible results. Astro-photography has a bit of a learning curve but once you know the basics, you will be pumped to head out in search of dark skies.
Where To Go
The name of the game with taking pictures of the night sky is to be someplace dark. The closer you are to a populated area, the more light pollution their is and the harder it is to see the stars. Light pollution is the glow you see in the night sky above a city. That glow makes it nearly impossible to see those faint stars or the milky way. When you get further away from those populated areas, you star to see all the little details and the billions of little dots of light twinkling in the night sky.
You can use a website like Dark Site Finder to see where to go to get away from all the light pollution.
Anywhere that would make for a good landscape location during the day also looks great at night.
Camping trips and overnight backpacking trips offer some of the best opportunities for getting those killer shots of the night sky at some amazing dark locations. When I go camping, I like to find someplace that has a nice view of a mountain, maybe a lake, or a river. Anywhere that would make for a good landscape during the day also looks great at night.
When To Go Take Pictures of the Stars
These are some of the factors you should consider when deciding when to out and take pictures of the night sky. No one time of the year is better than another time of the year, It is just different.
- Check the weather to see when it is going to be nice and clear. Good luck getting any pictures of the stars if its cloudy or rainy.
- Air Quality – The air is usually much cleaner in the colder winter months than during the summer. A smoggy haze can form in the summer months and linger until the rain comes and washes everything out of the air. But if you cant handle the cold, any other clear night of the year will work just fine.
- The Moon can drastically influence how well you can see the night sky. The best time to go out to capture the night sky is when the moon is just a small crescent, or when there is no moon at all. The partial moon will help illuminate the foreground so you will be able to see detail in the land and the sky. If the moon is too large, the sky will be washed out and the foreground will be really bright. Not the best for astro-photography.
- The sky changes from winter to summer. What is visible during the winter is no longer visible during the summer and vice versa. The Summer months between June and early September is when the Milky Way is most visible in the Northern hemisphere. The Winter months often have much clearer skies from all the rain washing all the debris out of the air. but it is also incredibly cold on those clear nights.
The sky is different in the summer than it is in the winter. In the Northern Hemisphere during the summer, you can usually see the glow of the milky way in the night sky. But the Milky Way is not nearly as visible in the winter. The same goes for constellations. Orion is only visible during the winter months. This is because the earth is really makes one complete revolution in 23 Hours and 56 minutes. That means that as the year goes on, the night sky is getting 4 minutes extra every day and by the time half a year passes by, you are looking at the sky that is usually only visible during the day, but now you can see it because it is now visible during the night. This is a crazy concept to think about, Click HERE to read more about this on Space.com
Night Sky Objects To Take Pictures of
There are all sorts of different objects in the night sky to take pictures of. Chances are you wont get to see all these in the same night, and if you did, that would be an absolutely spectacular evening. Smartphone apps like Starwalk and Stellarium will help you locate all these objects. Check out the recommended apps below to see more.
The Milky Way – The milky way is the crown jewel of night time astro photography. The huge band consisting of billions of galaxies with an incomprehensible number of planets stretches clear across the sky glowing a beautiful array of greens, and purples, blues, and reds. The milky way can make for an absolutely spectacular subject in your photo.
The Moon – The moon has been used since the beginning of mankind to keep track of time and the seasons. It is also often the most visible object in the night sky and the easiest subject to shoot when you are just dipping your toe into Astro-photography. The moon is also a great object to use to help you focus your lens at night.
Planets – There are a hand full of planets that are visible from earth with the naked eye. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn particularly. With a long enough telephoto lens or a telescope you will be able to take pictures of these planets and see details on the surface. In the picture I took of Jupiter, you can see the red bands on the surface and also the 4 moons orbiting the planet.
Star Trails – Another option is to take a series of images with the exact same composition over an hour or two and stack those images all together in Photoshop to make a picture like the one above.
The Sun – Without the Sun, there most likely would not be any life on earth, so why not show your gratitude for life by taking a picture of our local star. You may think its crazy or impossible to take a picture of the sun but it is totally possible. Get yourself a solar filter for your camera or a solar film that is so dark that you can look directly at the sun through it and not burn your retina. You will be able to see sunspots on the surface of the sun as well as any planets that pass in between the Sun and Earth.
Eclipses – A solar or Lunar eclipse is also a great time to whip out your camera and take some pictures of the show. During a solar eclipse part of the sun is blocked by the moon. During a Lunar eclipse, the moon passes into the shadow of the Earth causing the moon to turn a blood red color. This are called a Blood Moon. A Lunar eclipse requires no more special gear than a camera and a lens and maybe a tripod, but a solar eclipse can damage your vision and your camera so make sure to use a solar filter to cut the light.
The Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis – If you are near a Northern latitude up in Alaska, Iceland, or Canada, there is a good chance you might get to see the Northern lights. Solar storms on the surface of the sun emit solar winds that disrupt the Earths magnetosphere and emits light. People go on trips to Iceland every winter for the sole purpase of seeing the northern lights. The aurora can dip down into the lower latitudes if there is a particularly strong solar storm impacting earth. The Aurora is one of those things you absolutely must see and photograph at least once in your life.
International Space Station/Satellites – The ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes so it is constantly passing overhead. The space station will be a very light object moving clear across the sky at a good speed.
Comets – Every once in a while a comet comes zooming by the earth. As the comet approaches the earth you will start to be able to see the glow of the tail of the comet or a dust cloud around it. In 2013 Comet Ison was passing by the earth and I was able to capture an image of teh comet showing the soft green glow surrounding the object.
Meteors – Every year several meteor showers bombard the earth in a spectacular display of lights and flashes. The Perseid meteor shower around the 12th of August every year is my favorite. Meteors
UFO’s – The best thing about the night sky is that it is always changing and you never know who or what will be flying overhead.
Required Gear
You don’t need any fancy here to get a decent Night sky photo. Even a kit lens on a five-year-old camera is totally capable of making some cool night sky photos. That being said, good gear definitely helps you make better pictures of the night sky.
Camera
You want any camera that allows you to shoot in full Manual mode. One where you can control the Aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO all independently. You will need to control all of those separate to get the best results. The larger sensor inside a full frame camera like the canon 5D mark IV, Nikon D810, or the Sony A7R II works better for picking up low light and reducing noise in the shodows, but a crop sensor camera will work just fine. I have shot a lot of really cool astro photos with the 7D and 7D II which are both crop sensor cameras.
But the current best camera for astro photography is the Sony A7R II. The sensor inside the camera is an absolute beast at picking up low light and has quickly become the go-t0 camera for astro photographers. You can also mount any canon lenses you have to the Sony A7R II using the Metabones adapter.
A Solid Tripod
When you’re taking pictures of the night sky, you are usually taking and exposure lasting many seconds if not minutes long. Any vibrations that the camera feels will show up in your Final image. This is why you want a strong stable tripod. You can leave everything else at home besides your camera, Your lens, and your tripod and you would still be able to take some great night photos. The tripod is incredibly important for astro-photography so invest in a good solid strong and preferably lightweight tripod. REC GEAR
Lens
The best lens for photographing the night sky is one that is fast and wide. But the faster your lenses go, the more expensive they get.
- A fast lens with an Aperture around f/1.4, 1.8, 2.8 to pick up as much light as possible in a short amount of time. If you do not have a fast lens with a low f-stop, just try with whatever lens you have and see what you can get.
- A wide lens with a nice wide focal length anywhere from 11mm-24mm works best. If you go any higher than that and you are going to only see a small corner of the sky. The longer your focal length, the shorter your exposure can be before the stars start to move in your picture causing your stars to look like lines instead of little circles. The “Rule of 500” is used to figure out the exact length your exposure can be before you , but that will be explained later.
Suggested Astrophotography Lenses
Here are three lenses that I recommend for astro photography. All these lenses are under $650 and provide excellent results.
- Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 – This lens is fantastic because it is really fast to capture the faint stars quickly, its relatively wide at 24mm, and fairly inexpensive when compared to canon’s expensive 24mm 1.4. This lens works best on a full frame camera because 24mm on a crop sensor camera equates to 38mm. And a 38mm lens is not wide enough to capture much of the night sky. There has been some quality control issues with this lens so make sure everything works properly when you get it. I had to send my first one back because it would change focus t a completely different place when I took a picture that was different than what I focused on. If you get a good copy, this lens is hard to beat. A fast lens like the Rokinon 24mm f1.4 is a fantastic and affordable lens for astro-photography.
- Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 – This lens is not quite as fast as the lens above, but it is much wider field of view at 14mm and still pretty fast at 2.8. This lens will work much better with a crop sensor than the 24mm above because when you use a full frame lens on a crop sensor body, you have to account for the crop factor. When this lens is used on a canon crop sensor camera its real focal length is around 22mm. 14*1.6=22.4mm.
- Remote Shutter Release/Intervalometer – A remote shutter release allows you to trigger the shutter on your camera without touching it. If your camera has WiFi, you could also use your smart phone as a remote but I would rather not stare at a bright phone screen when trying to see in the dark. Many of the remotes that are sold for cameras also double as an intervalometer. An Intervalometer is a device that releases the shutter on your camera at a set interval. crucial in taking hundreds of pictures one after the other. I used an intervalometer to create this time lapse video of the Perseid Meteor Shower. Without one I would have not be able to take the hundreds of pictures at the exact right moment over 4 hours to create this video.
- Flashlight/Headlamp with RED mode. – It gets dark out there when you are taking pictures of the stars. Make sure you bring a flashlight or a headlamp when you are taking pictures after dark. You don’t want to trip over anything or walk off a cliff. A headlamp with a RED light mode is preferred so you don’t ruin your night vision. The red light has less effect than a bright white light. Just remember to be considerate when using your flashlight. make sure nobody is in the middle of an exposure before you shine your light into the scene or go walking through their shot.
Advanced Gear
As you get more comfortable taking pictures of the night sky, you will start to bump up against the limitations of your equipment. So far the gear list has been the basics of what you need for astro-photography, the following are some gear items that will help you create even more spectacular images of the stars.
- Star Tracker – A star tracker is a device that points your camera at a specific star, but as that object moves through the sky, the tracker automatically follows that object. This enables you to take pictures of the night sky lasting several minutes to hours or longer. When you are taking a picture this long, you will be able to see nebula’s, and neighboring galaxies.
- Telescope – Telescopes are not just for looking through, you can also mount a camera to a telescope to take ultra magnified images of our galaxy. You will need to order some special equipment to get your camera to mount onto the telescope. Here you can read about how I got my camera mounted onto a home built telescope from the 1950’s that I was gifted. LINK
Getting The Stars in Focus
One of the more tricky parts of taking pictures of the night sky is getting everything in focus. When you look through the view finder, the stars are so small that it can be difficult to tell if the star is tack sharp or not. These tips will help get those stars nice and sharp.
- Turn on Liveview to see what the camera is seeing. Find the brightest object in the sky and try to focus on that. Zoom in on the preview 5x or 10x to see up close if you are in focus. The moon or a bright star or planet works best for this.
- If I cant find a planet or bright object to focus on, try to use a streetlight or porch light on a house off in the distance to focus on. Point your camera at that object and use the live view plus the 5x or 10x preview to attain focus.
- If you can not focus on a light source, set your lens to the infinity mark and take a picture, review the image on the back screen to verify if the lens is focused correctly. Repeat until you are focused on something nice and sharp.
- Set your focus while there is still some daylight in the sky. Stick a piece of tape onto the lens to keep the focus ring from spinning. Now your camera is ready for when its dark and you can just start shooting without worrying about bumping the focus ring.
Camera Settings
These are my go to camera settings for astro-photography. Start with these settings and change them as needed.
- 25-30 Second long exposure – 25 seconds is the point where I can get the most light into the camera without the stars starting to move. If I bump it up to 30 seconds, the stars start to look like little ovals instead of little points of light so I usually keep it at 25 seconds.
- High ISO (1600-3200) – To pick up as much light as possible without too much noise. As I increase the ISO above 3200 it starts to get some bad noise issues. When there is too much noise, it is especially hard to see little stars in a noisy sky. This is why people who are really into astro-photography to invest in a camera that can produce really clean noiseless images when shooting at high ISO’s. See the Gear section above to see what cameras are great for astro-photography.
- f1.4, f2.8, f3.5, or as low of an f-stop as possible to pick up as much light as possible. But if you have a lens that only goes down to f4, that lens will work just fine. It wont be as good as the fast f1.4 lenses but they you can still get a decent shot of the stars
Rule of 500/600 – The stars in the sky are constantly on the move. It is hard to see it with the naked eye, but when you are looking through a camera lens at the stars or moon, you can easily notice the movement of the stars through the sky. The stars will look like little white lines instead of crisp points of light. The Photo Pills app talked about below has a built in calculator to help you figure out the Rule of 500 for any lens you have.
The 500 Rule is a little formula that you can use to see how long of an exposure you can take depending on the focal length of your lens and not get those little star streaks. This rule was originally called the 600 Rule but that number wash changed to 500 because people still noticed a little movement in the stars when 600 was used.
For example: If you are shooting with a 24mm lens on a Full frame camera. You would take 500/25=20.8 seconds. You can take a 21 second long exposure before you will capture the movement of the stars.
If you are using a crop sensor camera, like the canon 7D II for example and a 24mm lens, you will have to multiply the focal length by 1.6 to get the true focal length. 500/(1.6*24)=13 seconds.
If you are using a 10mm wide angle lens on a crop sensor camera, you can leave the exposure going for much longer than with a less wide lens. 500/10
Post Processing
The internet is full of amazing pictures of the Milky Way, or showing a bunch of shooting stars fall to earth. These images do NOT come out of the camera this way. Astro photos require quite a bit of post processing to take them from ordinary to out of this world.
I have a basic workflow that I use for 99% of my astro photos. These settings work for most of the pictures but sometimes they take some extra tweaking to get the very best image.
- Open your image in Adobe Lightroom
- Go to the Develop Module
- Adjust the exposure just a little bit – I do this to bring out any detail that might remain in the shadows. Just be careful not to overexpose the image. Adjust it untill you can see the most detail but you are not losing detail in the brighter areas of the image.
- Decrease the Blacks – You want the stars to stand out from a dark background
- Increase the Highlights and Whites – This makes the brightest parts of the image a little bit brighter. The stars will stand out better against the darkness of space.
- Add some contrast to make the milky way start to pop. The dark parts get a little darker, and the light areas get brighter.
- Adjust the Tone Curve – I will boost up the Highlights and Lights, raise or lower the Darks (raise in this case) and lower the Shadows.
- Add some clarity to make the stars pop a little more. Just don’t overdo it because it will start to add grain to the image.
- Adjust the White Balance to make the image more blue. It looks really unnatural when the night sky is glowing a dull yellow color.
- Adjust the Saturation a tiny bit to bring out some of the purples and greens in the milky way but Be careful not to overdo the saturation and make it look fake.
- Reduce the noise using the noise slider. Don’t go too far because you will start to lose detail in the stars if you add too much noise reduction.
- Adjust Dehaze slider – This slider removes that hazy glow that is in the air to better see the stars and Milky way better.
- Crop the image as desired
- Export and Share! – You went to all the effort to take the picture, now its time to show it off.
Helpful Apps
There are many apps that can help you plan your shoot. Some apps will tell you where the moon/sun will rise and set, where any constellation is going to be in the sky at any particular time, when two planets are going to conjunct, all sorts of things. No one app will tell you everything so these are the collection of apps I use to assist in my astro photography.
The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE) – TPE is one of the most important apps I use all the time to help plan my photo shoots. I am constantly using it to tell me when and where the moon is going to rise from anyplace on earth. If you want to capture a full moon rising behind a mountain, or when the sun is going to set between two rocks, than look no further than TPE. The best thing about The Photographers Ephemeris is that its free to use on a desktop computer. A mobile version can be purchase in the iPhone and Google App Store that is totally worth the price if you ask me, and that is my true opinion. LINK
Photo Pills – Photo Pills is another required app for the landscape and astro photographer. The app is full of useful tools for photographers like Sun and Moon tracking, Exposure calculators, Depth of Field calculators, Hyper-focal distance calculators, Night augmented reality to see where the stars are going to be, Star trail calculators, etc. If I were to buy just one App to assist in my photography, it would be Photo Pills. Apple App Store LINK
Star Walk – Star Walk is a nifty little app that I use often. It is an app that shows you all the different constellations, where many of the satellites are, when the International Space Station is going to pass overhead. What planet you are looking at, etc. There are 2 versions of Star Walk, but I prefer the first version because It has an augmented view mode that shows you what you are pointing your iPhone at. As you spin around, so does the app so it shows you what you are looking at while facing the other direction. Apple App Store Link
Stellarium – Stellarium works in much the same way as Star Walk. It shows you Deep-Sky objects, where the Sun and Moon is going to rise, where the satellites are, where the planets are, Constelations, Equatorial grid lines, Azimuthal grid lines, and a bunch of other neat things. Stellarium even has a built-in RED mode to help protect your night vision. That is the first app where I have seen that. Apple App Store Link
Final Tips
- Take landscape photos at night when the moon is about half full or a little less. The moon will illuminate the ground so you will be able to see the landscape around you. If the moon is not lit up at all, everything will just be completely black. If the moon is fully illuminated than everything will be way too bright. You want to find the happy middle ground.
- Use a headlamp with a RED mode to help preserve your night vision. Just remember to be considerate with where you shine your lights One wrong movement can ruin somebody else picture and they wont be happy.
- Dress warm, it gets cold out there at night so bring gloves, warm pants, an extra jacket, or even a warm blanket. A beverage of some sort often helps too.
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