I have been doing some astrophotography off and on over the years, but now having received a star tracker, I’m getting into the topic in more depth. I’d love to hear from anyone else in the group who is doing astrophotography especially on Mac. So far, I found a site which lists Mac astrophotography software: https://www.macobservatory.com,
and there are some great YouTube channels including AstroBackyard, Chuck’s Astrophotography, Peter Zelinka, Dylan O’Donnell, Alyn Wallace and Helena’s Astrophotography.
There are a lot of software aspects to astrophotography including but not limited to polar alignment, guiding, camera automation, goto, plate solving, stacking and post processing. There are apps that do one of these functions and apps that do more. Some are free and some are relatively expensive. Within the class of stacking apps, there are multiple variants - star trails, deep sky, planetary stacking. Some run on Windows, Mac and Linux, some on Mac only or Windows only and some list all the cameras and telescopes that they control but perplexingly don’t state what OS they run on.
If I’m allowed one ticket to rant for the year (and it seems a bit early to burn it now) it would be this: it’s ok to write software for Windows only, or Mac only, but could you please just say what platform your software runs on, rather than giving zero information about system OS requirements because you think everyone runs Windows.
Rant off.
Its something I’ve wanted to get in to - need to find the time
Any photos to share?
@bgrinter, sorry it took so long but it has been a cyclic process of learning, hitting a roadblock, improving equipment and trying again.
This year a lot of people have taken up astronomy and astrophotography and one of the big challenges is finding a supplier for the equipment you want, since it gets sold out quickly. Here’s a recent shot of the Andromeda Nebula, at least I am now a rung or two up the ladder.
thanks - very cool. I have a simple 8" Dobsonian at the moment but thinking about upgrading
That’s a great capture! So far, I have stuck being doing Milky Way landscapes (without a tracker). Does it have to be truly dark to capture photos like this? Can it be done in a city (I assume not).
Thank you @bgrinter and @bolero - I wish you both luck in following your interest in astronomy / astrophotography.
The light pollution scale is called the Bortle scale. 0 is the theoretical minimum. See https://www.lightpollutionmap.info. I live in 5-6 and some of the best YouTube astorphotographers live or lived in higher light pollution than I do, so it’s basically no excuse!
Check out Astrobackyard, started out in Bortle 8, moved house to get less light pollution, now in Bortle 6; Cuiv the Lazy Geek in Tokyo, Chuck’s Astrophotography in Detroit and there are other channels based in London as well, just to list those I know are in areas with significant light pollution.
Meanwhile here’s my latest M31:
