Budget (and city) deep sky astro photography


    Andromeda. Not from the city, but without a telescope.

    In order to photograph deep sky objects, you also need expensive equipment (telescopes with a large mirror, mount with an engine, etc.) and going out of the city - where there is no illumination.

    And what about those who have no money for expensive equipment, no space for storing 10 inch reflectors and no time to regularly go to the desert?

    I’m trying to figure out what to do in this case when I really want to shoot Deep Sky (i.e., nebulae, star clusters of galaxies).

    Firstly, long exposures are needed, for this I took Skytracker an equatorial mount for a camera (the next generation of this mount is already on sale ).

    Skytracker is put on a tripod, and already on it a tripod head is put on.
    Orient him to the polar star, turn on the engine and he turns the camera on the tripod head as the Earth rotates.

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    In the tube skytreker need to find a polar star. It should not be in the center of the circle (because the Polar Star is still not exactly at the point around which the stars are spinning). There is a special application for Android, which shows how to put it.

    Secondly interferes with urban illumination. To fight it, I bought a filter ( Hoya 67mm Intensifier Red Enhancer Filter ), which should partially remove the flare .

    Let's see how it works together.

    Everything was shot on Sony A7II, Sony-Zeiss 24-70 / 4.0

    The first shot without a filter, ISO 640, F4.0, 30 sec, 26mm

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    Now the same parameters of the picture, but with a filter. ISO 640, F4.0, 30 sec, 26mm

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    For 30 seconds and a focal length of 26 mm per full frame, you can still do something without the equatorial mount with a motor, but if you make more exposure and increase the focal length, the stars will turn into dashes - the Earth will rotate! So I put the Sky tracker on a tripod, a tripod head on the Sky tracker.

    This is without an ISO 640, F4.0, 67 sec, 60 mm

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    A filter with an ISO 640, F4.0, 106 sec, 60 mm filter.

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    If you do some processing over the last image, you get this Orion nebula:

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    For a picture from the city (I live in Rehovot, Israel, near Tel Aviv and the metropolis in general) and without a telescope, it seems good.

    If you go out of town thoroughly, then with the same Sony A7II, Sony-Zeiss 24-70 / 4.0 and Sky Tracker, you can also get this:

    Andromeda:



    Orion and Pleiades 105 sec, 24mm



    But they are increased to 100% from another image (89 sec):





    This is the Galaxy Triangle (M33) 128sec, with meteor, 70mm (full frame) - she accidentally entered the frame and I was looking for a long time on star maps, what I took off


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