Lewis Bray

Enjoying the dark skies and ruins of Llanthony Priory in South Wales. There's a real sense of amazement wonder in a place like this - perfect for #astrophotography

I've neglected my blue sky account again! Making up for it with a #milkyway shot from my hotel balcony last month in #madeira
This took some processing work to cut through the Funchal light pollution!

Some more from last night's vivid #noctilucentcloud display. This is a 12-panel pano, so be sure to open the image up for the whole thing. Also featuring #mars and the #moon

According to my bio I'm usually found cursing at the clouds. Last night was a bit different though...

#noctilucentclouds #wales #nightscape

Interested to see from other #astrophotography peeps what the best dark sky you've ever been to looks like in an unprocessed, straight out of the camera image? I took a photo from the south coast of Madeira last year and the #milkyway was so bright that I thought it was cloud at first!

70 minutes well spent on a crystal clear night this week. Whipped out the 85mm f/1.8 lens and got tracking a widefield of Pleiades. Shocked at how much dust showed up in the final image! 🤩

#astrophotography
#pleiades
#m45

That's an ideal lens! If you stop the lens down to F/2.8 and focus in on the constellation of Orion (the whole thing will fit easily in frame at 35mm) then you can comfortably take 6-8 second exposures without a tracker. Use your ISO to control the brightness and you have a working astro rig!

I forgot the tracker! That's an extra expense but mine was around £250

Not at all! It can get expensive, but this image was taken on a budget, 9 year old camera (around £400), a tripod (mine was around £120) a wide angle lens (bought used for (£75) and a remote shutter trigger (about £10). If you already have a DSLR then you are halfway there!

Thank you!

10-panel panorama of the milkyway arching over the #bannaubrycheiniog
All 30-second untracked single shots, stitched and processed in lightroom only. That airglow was wild! Such a dark sky lets the camera pick up some much faint colour
#nightscape #astrophotography #milkyway

When you have clear skies but forgot to charge your star tracker - STAR TRAILS TIME!

#startrails #nightphotography #nightscape

Once you get on to using a tracking mount you can do longer exposures with bigger lenses and your aperture doesn't matter quite as critically.
For a resource, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Photographing the night sky" by the late, great Alyn Wallace.

Thanks Andrew!
For this image I was using a 24mm f/2.8 lens. For this kind of image you want something wide (14-50mm) and fast f/2.8 or lower. That will allow you to take in a large part of the sky and capture light quickly without star trails showing up.

Thank you, Steve! 😁

Thank you!

Those dark skies make so much difference!

Thanks so much!

Thank you 😊

Thank you!

Certainly - it's a canon EOS1300D
unmodified and about as budget as you can get! That little camera is really doing some heavy lifting now!

Thank you!

Thank you 😁

Yes that really surprised me too!

Thank you! It was an unusually clear night so it had to be done!

It's a separate exposure for the house and sky from the same location and date (lights were off when I started tracking the sky)
The sky is a stack of 47 60-second exposures and the foreground a single 2 minute exposure

"you can't get Barnard's loop with a stock camera"

It's not easy - but you absolutely can pick up hydrogen alpha with an unmodified DSLR! This image damn near gave me a breakdown in the processing but I'm SO happy with the result after 2 years of trying!
#astrophotography
#orion
#nightscape

A huge #cloudinversion over the #SouthWales valleys created an ethereal scene with light pollution blocked out allowing #cygnus and the #northamericanebula to be visible much closer to the horizon than usual. And check out that green #airglow !
#astrophotography #nightscape

SO nice to have some time under clear skies!

It was very windy last night so I kept my exposures short (just 15 seconds) but spent 45 mins tracking Orion's sword and belt for a colourful little stack this morning.
#astrophotography #orion

It's too windy tonight for any serious #astrophotography but after the endless gloom I'm not passing up a night under a clear sky