My Astrophotography blog

This is where I'll be putting my shitty astro photos while hopefully improving to some extent. (this blog is still under construction)

[floraltelescopes]

Damn, forgot this blog existed… here’s what my new 70-200 Sony f/4 G OSS II lens can do in combination with my shitty Chinese star-tracker (it’s decent, just not made for 200mm), and an alyn Wallace msm V-wedge, followed by some hours in an image stacking software + lightroom. Pretty neat, actually. Mainly cause you can kinda see the horse head nebula!!

Almost worth the 7+ hours I spent in negative temperatures for three days in a row…

[floraltelescopes]

Aurora selfie, when I opened this pic on my private laptop I wasn’t as happy with the result as I was while editing, but the road to perfection is always under construction, and perfection goes against the idea of this blog. That being said this is as close to perfection I can get to all things considered, and it’s a damn fine picture. Also photographing and editing aurora is fucking HEAPS harder than anything else I’ve ever attempted. You know what to do, find Andromeda.

[floraltelescopes]

I think this edit is better than the last, still not perfect. Also I guess I have a watermark now too, won’t ask anyone to follow me anywhere cause I haven’t figured out what else to do or where else to upload really. I have an instagram but I hate how they compress images so astrophotos in particular look pretty shit over there. PS. I bet Andromeda will be even easier to find in this photo.

[floraltelescopes]

So Monday night was wild af, as you can see here. Rediscovered today that Auroras in particular are heaps harder to edit than my “normal” astro photos because I wanna keep my regular edit style and flow, while at the same time making shit as real and natural as possible. You tell me wether or not I succeeded. I took about 150+ pics this night so expect more of these in the future... Also try and see if you can spot Andromeda

[floraltelescopes]

Another Orion 55mm stack, I actually think this one turned out pretty decent. Almost phone background worthy. would love to take some deep sky pics of the orion nebula one day. Perhaps I should invest in a star tracker, or at least borrow one from my collegue first to see if it’s worth it. Fuck I need a new tripod too... and a panoramic head, that would be nice... why must photography be so fucking expensive 🥲

[floraltelescopes]

Stacking several pictures in order to reduce noise is currently my favourite way of editing astro photos in order to increase image quality. It is however tedious and time consuming as I had to do it manually since [REDACTED] is actually not as good of an editing software as people want you to believe. Once again here’s Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) between the constellations Ursa minor and Ursa Major taken on the evening of January 27th 2023

[floraltelescopes]

Orion 55mm stack, look at Betelgeuse, and the Orion Nebula, probably my favourite pic so far, could be better though, but the road to perfection is always under construction…. Should borrow my collegue’s star tracker some time…

[floraltelescopes]

Orion, Mars, Pleiades, Sirius, 25mm stack. Almost not shitty, don’t like the star trailing at the edges of the pic tho, didn’t take the rotation of the Earth into consideration when making the stack, just tried my best at not fucking up orion… will revisit this one too at some point soon I hope 🤞🏻

[floraltelescopes]

Here’s a stitch panorama I made out of two portrait photos I took of Orion and the Pleiades featuring the planet Mars™. For whatever reason the seam where the photos merged is very visible, the pics are very grainy cause I didn’t post process them well enough, will perhaps try and re-do this image because of that. Aside from all of that I’m pretty content with it.

[floraltelescopes]

My shitty view of the awaited comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)… unfortunately it doesn’t get better than this. I had to face north to see it, which isn’t ideal from my position as it’s full of light pollution and every pic got blown out. This pic is the result of a stack of 5x 5second exposures with my 55mm lens at f/4 and iso 25600 or so… I could KIND of make the comet out with my unaided eye, but only in the periphery. Oh yeah and the weird halo effect was caused by the lens hood that I totally forgot to remove 🫠

[floraltelescopes]

What up. Dream camera acquired. I am currently in the process of testing everything out, expect this blog to become semi active again in the near future 😎

[floraltelescopes]

Here’s today’s moon (yesterday now, may 3rd) it’s not a full moon because that’s tomorrow (or today if you’re in my time zone, may 4th). I totally didn’t expect to see this when I walked a trail today with my camera, I was looking for deer but then I saw this instead which was better. I didn’t have a tripod and I was on a horse paddock, luckily I found some rocks and an old well. So I improvised one. The focus isn’t that good to be honest but it was probably the best out of 62 images. It’s really not my best moon pic so far (I mainly just uploaded this to show my friend Ellen) By the way, that black line at the top is a power line. Now you know.

[floraltelescopes]

So yesterday there was a FUCKING AURORA BOREALIS right outside my window... I’ve never seen anything like this before so naturally I took pictures... A lot of pictures... like 260 pictures.. And I’ve tried to edit them today but I have absolutely NO idea what I’m doing. I think this one turned out pretty good though? Damn proud of this one. My eyes are tired from all the editing. Perhaps I will edit more later and perhaps I’ll upload the results then. Can we just appreciate the almost perfect focus I achieved in this image?  It still doesn’t feel real that this actually happened. But it’s supposed to continue until Saturday 21/3. MORE AURORAS! Another thing, I have bought a 300mm lens and ND filter (x1000) for the solar Eclipse on Friday. Let’s hope the weather is good. (Also that is the constellation gemini if you are wondering... At least I’m like 89% sure of it.)

[floraltelescopes]

Remember that old shitty milky way photo I took back in September? Let's face it, you probably don't.. But I kept my promise (was it even a promise?) anyway to re-do the editing so there you go or whatever... I kind of blew up some of the brightest stars, like Altair and Vega but  I'm not a pro so fuck it. This is still a big improvement and I've spent the last like three hours with this because photoshop makes my computer slow and drives me insane slowly. Plus it's in colour now..! sort of...  Perhaps I should post the original without the editing as well so you can see how big of an improvement this is? I'll do it some time in the future perhaps maybe... My neck hurts.

[floraltelescopes]

Since you all like shitty astrophotos, here are four really shitty pictures not even an hour old. I was in my backyard with only flip flops, a shirt, jeans, a Canon 600D, a Canon nifty fifty lens, and an old broken tripod. So what are we looking at? Let's not focus on the power-lines and my neighbours roof in the foreground. The bright ass star in these four photos is Sirius, our closest star (after the sun) also the brightest shining star in the northern hemisphere. Actually the brightest star in the night sky overall. What else is there in these shitty photos? Well you may or may not spot the tiny little blue/green dot moving in opposite direction from the rest of the stars. That would be C/2014 Q2 Comet Lovejoy. At least I am 95% sure of it.

I also saw a meteor while taking these photos but that was between the Pleiades and Cassiopeia and it was over in a flash. literally.

[floraltelescopes]

Here's one of my first attempts to capture Orion. The three stars appearing purple in the middle of this image is Orion's Belt and the white blob thingy below it? That's the famous Orion Nebula. Hopefully I can take some deep space photos of it once I have a telescope or something... I need a fucking job. Hire me please! Just you wait, once I have a Sony a7S these astrophotos will be fan-fucking-tastic!  The big bright orange star in the left corner is Betelgeuse, the 10th brightest star in the night sky. It is 570 light years away from earth and it is DYING. Once this fucker explodes (which could be any second now in the next like 1.000.000 years...) It will be visible even during the day. And it WILL be Amazing... JUST FUCKING EXPLODE ALREADY..!

[floraltelescopes]

I was out and took a bunch of pictures of stuff today (24/11-14) The sky was moon free and clear, which was an opportunity I've been waiting on for literally like three months. Here is a picture of a faint Milky Way galaxy, unfortunately there is quite a bit of light pollution and noise but I can't do much about it. Though the picture looks pretty nice anyway right? Also I can't see any constellations in this photograph so I don't really know what we're looking at...