Comment by lake99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lake99 | Hacker News Reader

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The advice here seems dated, even for 2015. Here's my advice:

1. Install an astronomy app on your mobile phone. Start with free ones, and see where it leads you. I recommend Skeye. This is good for going out by yourself and looking up things you see in the sky. For a PC, Stellarium is the best I have seen.

2. Get a camera capable of taking long exposure RAW photos, and get a tripod. There is so much hidden within the range of our FOV, that a telescope or binoculars are overkill. You'll use the camera for other things, so that won't be a special-nights-only investment. A basic DSLR should be fine, though I am curious about how well generic travel-zoom cameras do. If you have such a camera already, and played around with it, let me know.

Telescopes come after this stage.

> What about Astrophotography?

> Don't.

Sorry, this is shitty advice. His friend blew thousands of dollars on the hobby. I didn't.

> and untold thousands of rejected images

In the days of DSLRs? That's like saying I'm no good at computer games because of all the "bullets" that didn't hit my intended target. Lame. To put it bluntly.

> 8) Avoid any thoughts of astrophotography.

Fuck off.

Astrophotography without a telescope is indeed a good starting point. Get a bright 50mm lens and just with a simple barndoor tracker you can do amazing things. But as this article is about buying a telescope - and astrophotography through a telescope requires more skill than a complete beginner might imagine.

You don't even need a tracker at all. Just take a series of 20-second exposures, align them in hugin, and stack them. I have managed to get some remarkably good results this way, because the fact that the star background moves allows you to cancel out a lot of the noise that the camera and light pollution produces.

If the aligning phase can be automated, this looks like a nice plugin for ImageJ/ImageMagick or even an online version in a web page. (You an monetize it with ads about telescopes or something.)

(Bonus points for a deconvolution filter. (Is it useful here?))

Two pieces of gratis software (DeepSkyStacker Live) and RegiStax already do something like this, as well as PixInsight and the venerable Maxim DL, among others.

I did start with a ~50mm lens, but without a tracker. My camera can do up to 30s auto exposures, but those exhibit star trails at 50mm. I limit myself to 10s-15s exposures, and shoot a few hundred of them. The stars move, but the stacker (I use deepskystacker.free.fr) aligns them before stacking them. Though I'll add that DSS has a pretty steep learning curve of its own.

I agree that a beginner can't jump into astrophotography with a telescope. I'm of the opinion that learning with a camera and a tripod will teach a beginner to have reasonable expectations.

For those who don't know, this is what's possible without the telescope and the camera you can use for the other photos too:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/119551085@N06/15418169222/in/a...

Just Sony NEX-6, a tripod and 30 seconds on the (carefully selected) convenient place.

Using image stacking software is also a fantastic tip, big thanks to the sibling comments.

Just that camera, stacking software, and the driest, darkest place on Earth (slight exaggeration) the Atacama Desert.

Excellent photo, though. I'd love to visit a site with such dark skies and good seeing.

Would stacking work for that photo at all? Wouldn't the features on the ground be blurred if you align the stars?

I could believe it's just ISO 1600 and 30 seconds, as the EXIF says?

And you don't need to travel to Chile, just be away from the light pollution and be prepared to make the photos during the moonless night. Use the shooting timer and then you can even have a video of the stars moving, the Milky Way is always impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwzY1o_hB5Y

The advice not to do astrophotography is meant for the beginner. He wants you to concentrate "on the thing itself" first, on watching the stars, navigating to an object, controlling the telescope, getting a feeling for what eyepiece is good for what situation, getting a feeling on how wind affects your viewing experience, getting a feeling on where to put up your telescope, getting a feeling on how the environment affects the number of stars you see. He wants you to learn all those basic things first and not skip it. He essentially advises you not to take part in a tech arms race as a beginner. When you got a good feeling for the sky and your telescope and an appreciation for nature, he will surely not tell you not to take beautiful photographs of the sky.

> The advice not to do astrophotography is meant for the beginner.

My advice is meant for the beginner as well. All the other things you pointed out, well, you need to learn those things for astrophotography, even if you don't have a telescope. Given how many of us have DSLRs, this is something we can start today.

> He essentially advises you not to take part in a tech arms race as a beginner.

I did not advice getting into the arms race either. My advice was on getting started for free. But here's the thing. I did not ignore recent advances in hardware and software (i.e. cameras, smartphones, apps).

Compare the simulated picture of M31 in the article and the one shot with a 50mm kit lens: http://petapixel.com/2014/07/30/sony-a7s-astrophotography-re.... One can do much better with lenses that go to 200mm, which the stock zoom lens on some cameras already do.

If you make huge investments on viewing equipment and try to get into astrophotography later on, it might turn out that your equipment is completely unsuitable. Ignore it at your own peril.

You see, there are two types of people going to concert nowadays: the first group goes there to listen to the music, enjoying the atmosphere, have a good time. The second group goes there to film everything with their phone, take selfies, post to social media while there.

The OP is of the former type: before you go there and photograph, first take time and enjoy the simple, dark sky.

There is nothing wrong with buying a telescope with an equatorial mount instead of a dobson. But buying a dobson (and thus not having the possibility of deep sky photography) might still be a valid endeavour to really connect you mind to your new hobby. And a dobson can be had so cheap it is a no-brainer.

I for one would recommend going with an equatorial mounted Newton telescope with 6"+ . Then you have a lot to see and learn. And one day, when you are ready, take it to go for the photos. There were those great russian Sirius-Telescopes in the 90", equipped even with a motor. Do they still exist?

> The OP is of the former type: before you go there and photograph, first take time and enjoy the simple, dark sky.

Contrast that with what I wrote:

> 1. Install an astronomy app on your mobile phone. Start with free ones, and see where it leads you. I recommend Skeye. This is good for going out by yourself and looking up things you see in the sky.

Please don't make assumptions about me. For the record, my photographs are not for the social media. They are for me. I did not post any of my own here.

With the author's method, one might get to see M31 as a gray fuzz after they acquire a 10" telescope. With my method, they get to see M31 with a fair bit of color, when it is viewable at their location. While it's fine to go the author's route if that's what satisfies them, the reason I have such little regard for the author is his arrogance about a field that he is completely ignorant of. A beginner learning from just his article would walk away with a distorted sense of the field. I'd advice learning from someone who is more well-rounded.

You left off this point:

0. Get a decent pair of binoculars. If you have money, get image-stabilized binoculars. Learn your way around the night sky, and learn what's up there during the seasons.

I get more pure astronomical enjoyment from my binoculars than from my telescopes and AP rigs, honest.

> and learn what's up there during the seasons.

That's a good point.

I haven't used binoculars myself, so I wouldn't know whether to recommend it or not. But generally, when people ask me, I drive them in the direction of learning as much as they can before buying specialized equipment.

> Fuck off.

Please don't spoil your otherwise substantive comments by breaking the HN guidelines like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

It's too late for me to fix my comment. I'll tone it down next time.

Thanks!

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