Photographing the Andromeda Galaxy for 10 Seconds vs 10 Hours
This video by Ian Lauer is an excellent accessible explanation of the basics of astrophotography as he runs through the process of how he captures a long-exposure image of the Andromeda galaxy.
This picture is still black and white — and no, the galaxy is not devoid of color. There’s actually color in there, and we’ll get to color in a second. But first, let’s look at what happens when I zoom in on this image.
You can see there’s some graininess in this image, which we call noise. And we hate it because it prevents you from seeing more detail in your image. To combat the noise, we can take multiple images of that same target — so, one after the other — and stack them together using software to average out all of that background noise.
Take a look at what happens when we do that. This image isn’t just a single 1-minute image but 10 1-minute images stacked on top of each other. Look how how much better, how much cleaner, it looks when compared to the single 1-minute image.
There are a bunch more videos on Lauer’s channel to check out, including Shooting the Milky Way from Every Light Pollution Level and The BEST Telescope for Beginners (he recommends the Seestar S50 Astronomical All-in-one Smart Telescope, which many other people recommended on social media instead of anything on this list). Oh, and I’m gonna watch this one about astrophotography with the iPhone 17 Pro right now. (via the kid should see this)
Comments
Hello! In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions. Or try logging out and then back in. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation.
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!