This app was mentioned in 9 comments, with an average of 1.67 upvotes
If you have android there is awesome SunSurveyor App that shows and calculates all of this, shows when milky way core will be visible, total darkness(no moon) and many other useful for photography (and astro) things(golden, blue hour, etc...).
Thanks for the suggestion, I've not heard of that app.
I've been using this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ratana.sunsurveyorlite&hl=en
Would you say "The Photographer's Ephemeris" is legitimately better in a useful way? Or just better in a gimmick and eye candy way?
Is it a pig on data?
> I like Stellarium, which is a desktop program, by there are also mobile apps that do the same thing.
Sun Surveyor is fantastic mobile app for this kind of things.
What did you try? What settings you had? What lens do you have(one of most important things in Astro)
Here is nice sheet that gives you idea how "powerful" lenses for astrophotography are https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p8FSEIaDd45i97NXFEZf4fnVOQ3ifA43ecJcuS0nCJ0/edit#gid=2
Also look into "500 rule" It will allow you to calculate how long you can do exposure with cetrain focal length lens until you will get star trails, usually you can go a bit above that rule, but that's a good start.
Look into "Image stacking". This one is very important technique for astrophotography, in few words: you take multiply images (for example at least 10) and then stack them together to remove noise and get overall better image quality. There are many free software for stacking, for example try "sequator" it's really simple but yet pretty powerful, you can find a lot of tutorials on youtube. It will fix earth rotation too.
Just to give you idea about stacking here is example, this is one of my first tries so originally picture was exposed pretty bad. (18-135mm F3.5 kit lens)
Original raw picture https://i.imgur.com/3SI2lcW.jpg
Bumped exposure +3.3 in Light Room + few other sliders https://i.imgur.com/0rVUHJ3.jpg
10 pictures stacked https://i.imgur.com/3hvnbfw.jpg
Small curve correction in Photoshop https://i.imgur.com/qwKYwAK.jpg
So yea, I was very amazed how shit shot was recovered with stacking:)
For better results you need wide angle lens with big aperture for example I got Samyang 16mm, only got opportunity to shot once last autumn tho F2.0 https://i.imgur.com/N0pcQCB.jpg
Some usefull apps
https://www.windy.com/ - weather, all kinds of useful layers including clouds, fog, visibility.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ - To find place with minimal light pollution
Sun Surveyor - android app (no idea if it's also for iOS) that tracks sun, moon, golden hour, twilight, dark sky (no moon) milky way core visibility and tons of other useful things for astrophotography.
In tricky places I use the Sun Surveyor app to predict where the sun will be throughout the day. Sometimes in the trees just a few feet over can get more sun.
Even in more open areas it can make a difference. Here's a screenshot of me checking where the sun would be going down. I picked up a 1/2 hour more sun by shifting to where the sun would set over that lower cliff section on the right. Here is a screenshot of me checking when/where the sun would come up over a nearby cliff (answer: about 7:40am).
Note for potential van-dwellers: limited sun time is one of situations where lithium has a clear advantage, as Li doesn't care about partial states of charge. It takes 5-6 hours to fully charge lead-chemistry batts from overnight 50% DoD so they'd be suffering with only 3 hours of sun. Folks that will be camping in heavily shaded areas might want to pony up for Lithium.
To add to usefool tools I will mention:
https://www.windy.com/ - weather, all kinds of useful layers including clouds, fog, visibility.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ - To find place with minimal light pollution
Sun Surveyor - android app (no idea if it's also for iOS) that tracks sun, moon, golden hour, twilight, dark sky (no moon) milky way core visibilyty and tons of other useful things for astrophotography.
Or SunSurveyor It has lite free version
F3.5 is not best aperture for astrophotography, it will be hard to get great results without star tracker even with high ISO. It will definitely require image stacking.
Here is nice sheet that gives you idea how "powerful" lenses for astrophotography are https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p8FSEIaDd45i97NXFEZf4fnVOQ3ifA43ecJcuS0nCJ0/edit#gid=2
Also look into "500 rule" It will allow you to calculate how long you can do exposure with cetrain focal length lens until you will get star trails, usually you can go a bit above that rule, but that's a good start.
Look into "Image stacking". This one is very important technique for astrophotography, in few words: you take multiply images (for example at least 10) and then stack them together to remove noise and get overall better image quality. There are many free software for stacking, for example try "sequator" it's really simple but yet pretty powerful, you can find a lot of tutorials on youtube. It will fix earth rotation too.
Just to give you idea about stacking here is example, this is one of my first tries so originally picture was exposed pretty bad. (18-135mm F3.5 kit lens)
Original raw picture https://i.imgur.com/3SI2lcW.jpg
Bumped exposure +3.3 in Light Room + few other sliders https://i.imgur.com/0rVUHJ3.jpg
10 pictures stacked https://i.imgur.com/3hvnbfw.jpg
Small curve correction in Photoshop https://i.imgur.com/qwKYwAK.jpg
So yea, I was very amazed how shit shot was recovered with stacking:)
For better results you need wide angle lens with big aperture for example I got Samyang 16mm, only got opportunity to shot once last autumn tho F2.0 https://i.imgur.com/N0pcQCB.jpg
Some usefull apps
https://www.windy.com/ - weather, all kinds of useful layers including clouds, fog, visibility.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ - To find place with minimal light pollution
Sun Surveyor - android app (no idea if it's also for iOS) that tracks sun, moon, golden hour, twilight, dark sky (no moon) milky way core visibility and tons of other useful things for astrophotography.
I'm using Sun Surveyor lite.