I am very new to this exciting and challenging field. I have always loved the stars and the night sky, which for those who understand, seems to stem from some primal yearning. I had a book on astronomy as a kid, courtesy of my aunt, and learnt about the constellations and important stars. Somewhere along the way, life intervened, and that magic was lost. A trip to the Warrumbungles changed all that. Photographing the stars is a mix of technique and technology, and as my photos will show, hopefully, it involves a steep and humbling learning curve.
Our home galaxy: The Milky Way
These photos of the Milky Way were taken in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. The stacked result of 10-17 shots was taken with a Tokina 11-16mm and Nikon D610 camera. No tracker.
The M43 nebula in Orion.
This picture was the fortunate output of an attempt to stack 20 raw files. As I am still new to the process and was suffering from auto-guiding failures on my mount, I was restricted to one-minute exposures, most of which the stacking software rejected. However, this was a satisfactory output.
The equipment and software details are as follows:
Nikon D610 + Nikon 300mm f4 lens
60 secs, ISO 1600, f/5.6
Celestron Advanced VX mount, no auto-guiding
Starry Sky Stacker, Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoise