12 ms·

How to take a picture of the Milky Way

76 points by breck 10y ago

patrickdavey 10y ago
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-72157642137736655/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/malclocke/13055571855/in/album...
pwarner 10y ago
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.
pawelwentpawel 10y ago
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/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BKWqWHZAQps/
- debeggar 10y ago
  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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Yhippa 10y ago
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 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/rastrophotography_public_data_donation_drive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/2urd0p/ra....
- rconti 10y ago
  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.
  - Jack000 10y ago
    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.
Jack000 10y ago
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.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Yes, that is a popular technique. Lots of apps to do it too, Starry Landscape Stacker is a good one.
jonknee 10y ago
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/BJBgSTvg-wO/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BGU-1d0uyJN/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BGU-1d0uyJN/
- darrelld 10y ago
  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 https://flic.kr/p/Lw5qWz
  - jonknee 10y ago
    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.
    - 10y ago
paulmd 10y ago
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.
sakopov 10y ago
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/ http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/ [2] http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk-2-guide-sky-night-day.html http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk-2-guide-sky-night-day.ht... [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/27003195396/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/27003195396/in/da...
- Jerry2 10y ago
  Awesome advice! Quick question... what's that series of dots in [3]... just above and to the left of the tree?
  - sakopov 10y ago
    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 :)
rbritton 10y ago
I've found this pretty useful in finding the best locations to do astrophotography: https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html 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.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Aurora.jp... https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittarius.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittari... https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Galaxy.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Galaxy.jp...
pp19dd 10y ago
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/ 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.
- watersb 10y ago
  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.
- eventualhorizon 10y ago
  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.
BeetleB 10y ago
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-astrophotography-in-adobe-lightroom/ http://www.lonelyspeck.com/how-to-process-milky-way-astropho... http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-way-photo-in-lightroom/ http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-... https://www.slrlounge.com/process-milky-way-photos-maximum-effect/ 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!
- mangamadaiyan 10y ago
  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 http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/books.html They are well worth reading.

76 points by breck 10y ago

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-72157642137736655/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/malclocke/13055571855/in/album...

pwarner 10y ago

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.

pawelwentpawel 10y ago

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/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BKWqWHZAQps/

debeggar 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Yhippa 10y ago

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 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/rastrophotography_public_data_donation_drive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/2urd0p/ra....

rconti 10y ago
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.
- Jack000 10y ago
  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.

Jack000 10y ago

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.

jonknee 10y ago
Yes, that is a popular technique. Lots of apps to do it too, Starry Landscape Stacker is a good one.

jonknee 10y ago

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

darrelld 10y ago
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 https://flic.kr/p/Lw5qWz
- jonknee 10y ago
  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.
  - 10y ago

paulmd 10y ago

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.

sakopov 10y ago

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/ http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/ [2] http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk-2-guide-sky-night-day.html http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk-2-guide-sky-night-day.ht... [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/27003195396/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeyakopov/27003195396/in/da...

Jerry2 10y ago
Awesome advice! Quick question... what's that series of dots in [3]... just above and to the left of the tree?
- sakopov 10y ago
  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 :)

rbritton 10y ago

I've found this pretty useful in finding the best locations to do astrophotography: https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html 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.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Aurora.jp... https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittarius.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittari... https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Galaxy.jpg https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Galaxy.jp...

pp19dd 10y ago

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/ 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.

watersb 10y ago
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.
eventualhorizon 10y ago
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.

BeetleB 10y ago

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-astrophotography-in-adobe-lightroom/ http://www.lonelyspeck.com/how-to-process-milky-way-astropho... http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-way-photo-in-lightroom/ http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-... https://www.slrlounge.com/process-milky-way-photos-maximum-effect/ 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!

mangamadaiyan 10y ago
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 http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/books.html They are well worth reading.