A Look Back at my Deep Space Photos

I got into Deep Space astrophotography about 5 years ago as I was living out of my car and traveling around the country.  With so much free time to sit under the stars, I wondered what would be possible with just a DSLR, telephoto lens, and small star tracker.  

My first photos weren't all that good, but it was very exciting! 

Looking back now, I'm a bit disappointed to see how few great photos I've captured in the past 5 years.  My #1 problem is that I was jumping around to different targets each night.  I never stopped and focused on a single target long enough to get great data.

Therefore, my best advice to any beginner is that you need to spend as much time as possible on just one object at a time.  Use the same settings, the same focal length, and the same composition night after night.  Don't stop until you've got at least 5 hours of data.  (most of the photos seen in this video were 2 hours or less)  

If you can capture 5  - 20 hours of data on a nebula or galaxy, that will go a long way towards making an incredible photo.

Of course, you need to know how to process that data.  There's plenty of great tutorials here on YouTube to get you started.    

If you'd like to learn more about deep space astrophotography, check out my Deep Space Course on howtube:

https://www.howtube.com/series/eUVHB9fI

00:00 - Intro

00:13 - Andromeda Galaxy

03:16 - California Nebula

03:39 - Heart Nebula

04:39 - Horsehead Nebula

05:35 - North America Nebula

06:37 - Orion Nebula

08:00 - Pleiades 

08:16 - Rho Ophiuchi

09:12 - Rosette Nebula

10:22 - Veil Nebula

11:00 - What I Learned

13:52 - Outro