How to take a picture of the Milky Way | Hacker News Reader

How to take a picture of the Milky Way

covingtoninnovations.com

76 pointsbreck36 comments

I have had some decent success with the Milky Way this year and while this article is decent, here are a few more tips:

1) Use an app to find where the galactic core will be at what time. This is harder than it sounds because ideally you want to compose an image with something interesting in the foreground (a mountain, rock formation, building, etc). Poor timing, but peak season has already passed this year in the Northern Hemisphere--it's a Summer pursuit. I use Sun Surveyor, but there are lots of apps that do this.

2) Focus is extremely critical and very hard to do after it's dark. I set the focus manually before sunset using a distant object and then use gaffer's tape on my lens so that I don't accidently bump it later. There is nothing worse than coming home to a bunch of slightly blurry stars. Do not trust "infinity" on your lens, it's not accurate!

3) Use the rule of 400 to decide on maximum exposure time. Divide 400 by the length of your lens to get max seconds (e.g. 400/24 = 16.66s for a 24mm lens). Some people use 500, but either way you get a nice ballpark. More time than this and you will get star trails. Neat if that is what you want, awful if you want a nice shot of the Milky Way. This rule assumes a full frame sensor, so if you have a crop sensor remember to adjust (a 24mm lens on Micro Four Thirds would be 48mm for this calc).

A couple of my shots from this year:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJBgSTvg-wO/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGU-1d0uyJN/

1: You can actually see the galactic core easily with the unaided eye if you get far enough away from the city. An app will help if there is too much light pollution, but light pollution will also put a cap on your exposure time.

2: Not a bad idea at all. Mirrorless cameras shine here as well.

3: Sounds about right. Nothing wrong with experimenting also. Different cameras introduce different amounts of noise at various ISO settings, so the ideal ISO / shutter speed will vary. Again, if trailing doesn't get you, you need to worry about light pollution eventually washing out the photo.

Those are some beautiful shots! Here are my horribly processed contributions:

http://i.imgur.com/IO5A43p.jpg - M13 through a 5" Maksutov Cassegrain

http://i.imgur.com/jYBHJul.jpg - Northern sky in Maine. Milky Way was overpowered by Augusta's light polution.

The processing is a lot more difficult than the shooting IMO... lots of fun though.

> 1: You can actually see the galactic core easily with the unaided eye if you get far enough away from the city. An app will help if there is too much light pollution, but light pollution will also put a cap on your exposure time.

I always line up shots during the day, apps are useful so that you can frame things before it is dark (e.g. directly over a rock formation, mountain, old barn, whatever). You can see both place and time, so you'll know if it will be dark enough when it is where you want. Finding a good location for an interesting shot is the hardest part IMO.

These are amazing! I'll have to try your 3rd tip next time I'm out in the dark.

I took my first Milky Way picture in June from the Grand Canyon:

https://flic.kr/p/Lw5qWz

I haven't caught the stars at the Grand Canyon yet, that would be awesome!

It might just be the image quality at Flickr, but it looks like you could have focused a little better. Sometimes it's moisture in the air (I've had really light fog ruin things), but at the Grand Canyon that's not likely the case.

It probably was my focus...I struggled all night with it. Using your tips I'll be better equipped next time.

If you have an iPhone the PhotoPills app [0] will help with steps 1 and 3 (and in a lot of other photography situations as well). I found it to be worth the money. That said, my Milky Way shots pale in comparison to yours (but my excuse is that I'm still working with a relatively cheap APS-C camera).

[0] http://www.photopills.com/

Thanks for the reference. There are a zillion photo apps, and a zillion paid reviews; it's really hard to get good info on what's worth it and what's not, so I tend to lean on people who recommend something naturally as part of a larger discussion.

Nice photos!

> Do not trust "infinity" on your lens, it's not accurate!

It's perfectly accurate on the manual focus Nikkor AI-S lenses I use. Can't speak for other lenses. Of course, they don't do lenses like that anymore.

Here's a good piece on what changed:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/features/who...

Different manufactures gave different reasons, but in general you should always go by sight and not a ∞ mark. Even in a manual Nikkor lens there will be a shift based on temperature so you don't want to strictly go by the numbers (which is why ∞ is often juuust past focus, it lets you work in more environments).

What is your process for light and color correction?

The article is fairly poor, compared to other ones. I used to have a list of good ones, but lost the list :-(

Googling, these look familiar:

http://www.lonelyspeck.com/how-to-process-milky-way-astropho...

http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-...

https://www.slrlounge.com/process-milky-way-photos-maximum-e...

The last 2 are about post-processing. You will not get good Milky Way photos without serious post-processing!

To me, it looks like the article is intended for an interested "not yet beginner", to just get them to try out astrophotography. I think it does what it set out to do.

FWIW, Michael Covington has written some fairly detailed astrophotography books:

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/books.html

They are well worth reading.

A couple of links i want to throw out for those who are interested in locating and shooting the Milky Way.

Check out Clear Dark Sky for star-gazing forecasts [1] and download Sky Walk on your phone for locating the Milky Way (along with just about anything else you're looking for) [2].

For those of you guys near Denver area check out Last Chance, Colorado for some VERY dark night skies.

Here is how i shoot with DSLR...

1. Get a sturdy tripod.

2. Get a remote-release (preferably with timer) to avoid any vibrations during exposure. They're typically around $20.

3. Shoot on the lowest f-stop you lens supports. I shoot with f/2.8.

4. Zoom all the way out.

5. Set the focus on manual & focus your lens on infinity. You'll typically see the infinity symbol on the lens. If you don't have one, just rotate the focus ring all the way until it doesn't move and then typically just a notch back (2-3 millimeters). I find that that usually works. Some folks do this before they get out at night to shoot. You just have to be extra careful and not touch the lens or make a mark on the lens so that you can always set it back.

6. Set your ISO to anywhere from 400-800.

7. Cover the eye-piece.

8. Start shooting! Your exposure time is probably going to be somewhere between 10-20 seconds to get a crystal clear shot. So this is where you experiment with ISOs and exposure times. This will all depend on how dark your dark spot is :)

Shooting the night sky is fairly trivial. Finding a good spot is incredibly difficult.

I don't do a lot of Milky Way stuff since it's such a pain to find a good spot, but i do all night time stuff pretty much the same way [3]

[1] http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/

[2] http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk-2-guide-sky-night-day.ht...

[3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/27003195396/in/da...

On most lenses I've used, the infinity mark is incorrect. Find the true infinity. The method is to focus on a distant light source. Switch to Live View, magnify and focus until the light source is "smallest" (if it is far enough, it will be a point).

(By magnify I mean digitally on the display - not by zooming in your lens).

Now you're at infinity.

As for ISO, it'll depend on how good your sensor is. But most people need well beyond 800.

Shooting around F/8 will lead far greater sharpness than f/2.8 if you're focusing on infinity

F/8 will allow so little light in you really won't get much of the Milky Way.

The usual suggestion is the lowest F-stop, and the widest lens. On my 21mm, at F/2.8 shooting at ISO 1600 for 30 seconds, I get a poor Milky Way. Were I to do it at F/8.0, I'd get virtually no milky way.

Awesome advice!

Quick question... what's that series of dots in [3]... just above and to the left of the tree?

If you're talking about the long streak of dots it's most likely a plane and the side-effect of a photo-edit gone bad :)

Your ISO seems a little low. I usually shoot at ISO 3200, F2.8 and 20-30 seconds

All depends on the site you find. I usually don't have anything super dark within reasonable range and shoot at 800 most of the time. 3200 is probably pretty grainy, isn't it? I think the highest I've ever gone with my wide-angle lens was 1300 to capture this time-lapse [1] in Colorado with a pretty bleak Milky Way.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/11723352663/in/da...

3200 is grainy, true. But usually it's not too bad. I just don't think with 800 you'll get that many stars and the richness of the Milky Way. If I didn't live in LA I would try ISO 800 tonight and compare with 3200 but I'll have to wait until I get to a dark place again.

Unrelated to imaging, this domain jogged the memory. Author is the guy who created the "NOPPP" - no parts pic programmer: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/noppp/

More than a decade ago I was starting out with microcontrollers, and that was the first programmer I built from scavenged parts. He also wrote a book (PDF available on site) for absolute beginners to microcontrollers that was very helpful. The man is a famous polymath, and it was good to run across his site again.

This is certainly a nice surprise. I took my first CS course from Dr. Covington. I remember on the first day of class he went through the roll of 70+ students telling almost everyone the linguistic origin and meanings of their names.

He has many interests and seems to be an expert in nearly all of them. I consider him to be the smartest person I've ever met. Thanks for posting this.

Yes, I was pleased to see his work on HN.

When I was in high school, he invited us over to talk about technology and to show us some of his works in progress. My tiny experience with 6809 assembly...

Not only an accomplished engineer, but a great educator and kind person.

The real trick is to shoot from a location with low light-pollution. Urban and suburban areas are incredibly polluted and equipment can't fix a view that just isn't there. In dark-sky areas, the Milky Way is easily visible to the naked eye.

The red Hoya Intensifier filter helps somewhat - it cuts out the spectrum that is emitted by sodium-vapor lamps commonly used for street lighting. It's not perfect but it helps.

You either need to use a fast enough shutter speed that you won't get star traces from the Earth's rotation, or get a tracking mount that can follow the rotation.

High ISOs (high sensor sensitivity) are really helpful for keeping the shutter speeds down. Modern cameras have made huge progress on high-ISO performance with good noise levels. The Sony A7S is particularly good.

For Milky Way photography you will want a fast wide-angle lens. Astrophotography is considered one of the most challenging tasks for a lens because you'll be shooting near wide open. Modern computer-aided-design lenses with exotic glass and aspheric surfaces significantly outperform older lenses. I am a big fan of Samyang's lineup, their lenses are top-notch for reasonable prices.

Come to the next Railscamp in New Zealand (march ish). This picture: [0] was taken there the last time we had it. Killer skies in the Southern Hemisphere ;)

[0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/malclocke/13055571855/in/album...

I've found this pretty useful in finding the best locations to do astrophotography: https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.htm...

You can use the same general approach for Aurora photos if the solar activity is high enough for your location too.

My favorites:

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Aurora.jp...

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittari...

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Galaxy.jp...

This is one of my favorite hobbies when I get to a spot with lower light pollution than I'm used to. If it helps you can use tools like Google Sky Map to see where the sun is relative to where you're aiming. I am cheap so I ended up getting a Rokinon FE14M-C 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens for my DSLR. No autofocus but you'll be shooting at infinity anyway.

For inspiration check out https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography. A lot of the people who post will share the tricks of their trade and there are some awfully impressive shots I've seen.

Edit: The reddit sub also has a list of public data for you to try your post-processing skills on: https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/2urd0p/ra....

What's the significance of where the sun is? Would the Milky Way be in a fixed position relative to the sun?

I'll have to give this a try. Unfortunately the least light-polluted place I often visit, up around 8000ft, there are tall mountains to the south.

I think the sun would add haze to the horizon and obscure the stars near sunrise/sunset?

Also because the solar system is on the galactic plane, for half of the year (winter in the northern hemisphere) the galactic center is behind the sun.

Perfect timing! I was post processing my some of my night photography pictures recently. Maybe a silly question (I'm definitely not an astronomy pro) but, is that the milky way I got on my pic here? - https://www.instagram.com/p/BKWqWHZAQps/

Yes it is the milky way band. The next time you can search for Milky way on sky apps like Google Sky map and point your camera in that direction.

If you have a reasonable camera and tripod you need to try this. I caught comet Lovejoy: a dozen green pixels out of 16 million.... But I caught it, without any experience or too fancy a setup. Also fun, point at the darkest, emptiest spot of sky and be amazed at all the stars you see in the photo. Rather fun.

I always thought this would be a great application of computational photography. Take a bunch of shots, segment stars/foreground with optical flow, then stack with no star trails.

Yes, that is a popular technique. Lots of apps to do it too, Starry Landscape Stacker is a good one.

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