What is Reddit's opinion of
Star Chart?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
Popularity Score: 30
This app was mentioned in 44 comments, with an average of 1.45 upvotes
Best Comments
A rule of thumb I was always told was that stars twinkle, but planets do not.
It has something to do with stars being basically point sources of light while planets have a visible (if nearly imperceptible) disc.
Also, if you get in the habit of always looking up at night, you will begin to notice groupings of stars always in the same place relative to one another. Stars don't get closer or brighter, at least not on any scale we can perceive (unless they explode, of course), because they are just so, so far away from us.
Planets wander across the starfield, though. They'll be in a slightly different place every night. After years of observing, you can get pretty good at guessing which planet you are seeing, based on its brightness, color, and other factors.
But I still need to cheat, so I use an app like Star Chart.
Does SkyMap still work? I thought they stopped updating it years ago. I've been using Star Chart (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en)
It has some nifty bells and whistles, like overlaying constellations on the stars so you can actually figure out what you're looking at in the sky.
May I recommend Star Chart?
It is a great, free app where you can add some secondary purchases. If you're a newbie and want to know the name of stars wherever you are, this is great, you just point up to the sky and figure it out.
Download Star Chart from the Play Store. Turn on AR Mode in the sidemenu settings in the Star Chart app. It's supposed to use your gyroscope to look around the star chart, but if you have gyro jitter issues, the chart should constantly shake or wiggle back and forth a bit even when the device is completely still.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en
​
this is literally the best app in the entire app store and every kids phone should come pre-installed with it
I can't recommend Star Chart highly enough on Android, but I imagine there are multiple equally good apps that do the same thing.
Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart
Highly recommend Star Chart, a free AR app that uses your coordinates to give you a real time map of the night sky. Just point your phone camera at the star in question and it'll tell you what it is! :)
You need to point your camera towards the constellation Sagittarius. You can use any sky chart app to help you, I personally use Star Chart.
As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be too. For stacking you can either use Deep Sky Stacker or Sequator. Both are free, and I would suggest trying Sequator first because it's simpler, and takes less time to stack the images as well. Looking forward to see your shot. Good luck! :)
You can use a starchart app on your phone to help you out. I use this one and it's pretty nice.
All you need to do is plug in your location details, and point your phone in the sky and it will tell you which star/planet is which
The Geminids Meteor Shower is one of the largest of the year, with the peak set to take place in Korea on Saturday night (14-15 December). The number of visible meteors is expected to be lower than usual due to the nearness of the full moon, but online sources suggest that means 20-30 visible meteors per hour rather than the typical 120 per hour that might otherwise be seen. On the other hand, the Geminids have more fireballs than most other meteor showers, making the meteors appear as bright as Venus. After playing around with settings on the site's interactive sky map, it looks like 9pm on Saturday, 14 December is predicted to be the best time to spot meteors streaking away from the area around Castor in the constellation Gemini.
For finding Castor and Gemini, I recommend the app Star Chart (Apple | Android. The default free version lets users search for individual stars (Castor in this case) and offers directional arrows to line it up in the center of the screen. It's a pretty neat app in general for anyone who likes identifying objects in space.
Lower your exposure time! Rule of 500 is your friend! 500/(focal length x crop factor) = seconds
Most astro shots are at 3200-6400 ISO, try that next time. The Milky Way is pretty much behind the sun now but in April or May it will be back out and you can try to get those.
I'd suggest a Star Chart similar app, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en . Keep up the effort!
Been using this one for years https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart
This one has more downloads and is better reviewed https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.stardroid
I haven't tried Planit! but it looks interesting. Star Chart by Escapist Games is something I've used to get an idea of where the dim band of the Milky Way was before setting up for a long exposure. I also thought it was neat how I could move around and have all of the constellations and stars in front of me defined and labeled.
If I tell you you're going to be upset :P Download this and open the left side menu, hit the "Mode" part and turn on "AR Mode" and you'll see.
You could try some star gazing apps first. They're incredibly helpful.
I would suggest Starchart if you're on android.
Star Chart is the same thing but for the night sky. There's another one which has the Arabic/Chinese/Indigenous constellations as well but I don't know what it's called.
Aise galti kabhi mat karna download this
Itna bright hai toh planet he hoga. You can't see stars from my place + I used star chart to confirm
If you like computer stuff, check out Space Engine for some perspective on the universe. It's pretty mindblowing, and will help you to relate to what you're seeing through your scope.
There are a tonne of smartphone apps that will help you, too. I'm far from an authority, but I use:
StarChart for checking planet and deep-sky-object locations, and for learning the constellations (very, very slowly...).
Heavens-Above is an eye-opening app that tells you what satellites and rocket debris (seriously, it's mostly rocket debris up there) is passing over you at that moment, and how visible it should be. Note: The astronomical brightness scale is assways. 5 is really dim, and -5 is brighter than anything in the sky at night except maybe the Full Moon.
Also, Pro-(Am-)tip: The Moon is much more interesting when it's only partially lit. The shadows of the craters, mountains, and rift valleys are much more apparent and can be really stunning.
Check out
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart
for on the go fun.
Reminds me a fair bit of the Star Chart app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composite, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
If you like this shot, you can check out my other work on my insta @astronot_yet . I do Astrophotography with a cheap/affordable camera and try to teach people that beautiful night sky shots are possible even without driving hundreds of miles to a dark desert or to spend your entire month's salary on buying expensive gear.
What is Stacking?
Stacking means taking lots of images of the same subject, align them together and take an average of all the frames. This increases the Signal to Noise Ratio(SNR) of the image and reduces the random noise that creeps up in your photos. Bottom line: You can get really high details by stacking multiple images than using just one image.
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter(if you don't have a remote, you can just put the camera on a 2s timer. This is just to make sure the camera stops vibrating after you've pressed the shutter button)
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Star chart app for android .... and others https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en_AU
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composite, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter(if you don't have a remote, you can just put the camera on a 2s timer. This is just to make sure the camera stops vibrating after you've pressed the shutter button)
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter(if you don't have a remote, you can just put the camera on a 2s timer. This is just to make sure the camera stops vibrating after you've pressed the shutter button)
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composite, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need professional gear costing lakhs of Rupees or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter(you may be able to use your phone as a remote as well if your camera has Wifi)
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like.
The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
Details:
First, please note that this image is a composition, meaning I first focused my camera on only capturing the Milky Way exposures, and then, I took one shot of the buildings(and myself) in the foreground and blended them together. The entirety of this image was taken from my terrace.
My main aim is to show that you don't necessarily need expensive gear or to drive hundreds of kilometers to a darker area(especially in current times) in order to photograph the Milky Way. It can be done right from your own roof with just a simple DSLR and a laptop(and admittedly, time. LOTS of time)
~~(I'll add the process of how I captured this shot soon in this same comment. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me in the mean time)~~
Equipment-
Nikon D3100, Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a cheap tripod, one remote shutter
EXIF:
F/3.5, ISO 3200, 15sx240 exposures
Process:
1) First you need to locate the Milky Way. The best way is to download any star chart app, and find the constellation Sagittarius. I used this but you can use your own favorite.
2)Point your camera roughly on Sagittarius. As long as Sagittarius is in your frame, Milky Way will be as well.
3)Use the widest available lens you have. I took my shots with just a kit lens that came with the camera at 18mm. This is to get as much of the galaxy in our frame and also to avoid star trails(I'll talk about that in a minute)
4)You're going to need a remote shutter to take the images without touching the camera, because whenever you touch it, it will impart some vibrations to the camera and your exposures will have some blurriness. You can buy a cheap wired remote, or if your camera is fairly new it may have wifi capabilities so you can take exposures by using your smartphone.
5) How to select your exposure length: If you set your camera's shutter duration for let's say 30s or higher, what you will see are star trails where instead of pin pointed stars, you'd see them moving in a line, ruining our shot. In order to get sharp looking stars, use the rule of 500 which is essentially to divide 500 by your focal length(times the crop factor) and set the shutter time as that. Take a shot, zoom in and check the stars, if you see some trailing, lower your shutter length and test again. For my case, Rule of 500 gave me 500/(18x1.5)=~18s, but it was still a bit traily so I shot my exposures at 15s.
6) Take as many exposures as you can. If you're already in a darker area, 50-60 exposures will be good enough. I only took 240 because I wanted to expose the galaxy for 1 full hour. DO NOT change any settings in between the exposures. It's a good idea to not disturb the camera at all while it's taking the shots.
7) Take a few bias, dark and flat frames. How to take these here
8) After all this, you can use any stacking software to process these shots. My favorite is Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator. Pixinsight is also a capable one, but it's not free so pick whichever one you like. The main job of stacking software is to align all the exposures and then sort of take an average of the frames which decreases noise and increases the Signal to Noise ratio of our image, so the final shot results in extremely high details and very less noise.
9) I processed the result in Lightroom, then added the foreground in Photoshop
Please note that this is a very simple explanation, and some of the rules and technologies I wrote above might have mistakes, or may not work in your case. Please remember, experiment and experience will give you the best results. Also, if I indeed made some mistakes above, please correct me.
Ask me if you guys have any other questions :)
There are several phone apps that can assist in identifying stellar objects.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en
Star Chart (Android) is my favorite
Thanks! I'm currently using "Star Chart", is there any notable features of Solar System Scope that Star Chart doesn't have?