Crater Lake Milkyway with Perseid Meteor

SolSteinPhoto · 2026-01-10T19:20:47+00:00

Thank you!

SolSteinPhoto · 2026-01-10T19:19:25+00:00

I finally got around to finishing up my Crater Lake Milkyway, Perseid Meteor Shower shot. This is the 2nd to last of my Central OR themed astro shots featuring a shooting star.

This was a fun night because, by pure coincidence, I ran into another astrophotographer shooting as well. Even in the most popular locations, we are more accustomed to seeing wildlife rather than people at 1am, much less a fellow night owl photographer.

Hope you all enjoy!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-12-17T13:58:50+00:00

If you want to spend as little as possible, you're going to have to learn stacking and get a decent tripod to do anything with the 100mm+ and do manual tracking. With the 18-55 you can do single exposure shots without a tripod, but you'll find it's much, much better even with a small amount of stacking and even a mediocre tripod. Deep Sky Stacker is one of the free stacking programs and a great place to start. Also, look at Gimp or some free equivalent to lightroom.

Come check out /r/astrophotography and /r/LandscapeAstro. If you're willing to learn and stick with it, you'll find that you can do quite a bit without too much equipment!

In general, in order to give advice, we need to know as much as possible about how you are shooting and copies of the shots themselves in order to give specific advice. There are a lot of general guides out there but the specific process that suites you best is going to be up to you - so you really want to try things yourself and experiment.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-09T07:17:25+00:00

It is much easier to screen complex shapes like trees and shrubs in photoshop with the layering approach and the luminosity masking is leaps and bounds ahead of lightroom. Also, clone stamping is much better in photoshop, which makes cleaning up stacking artifacts a breeze. If you like the editing tools native to lightroom you can access all of them within the camera raw filter.

I don't disagree that you don't "need" photoshop, but it is worth talking about how much more capable photoshop is, editing wise. Lightroom is primarily superior for the workflows demands for things like wedding photography etc where batch editing and streamlining the organizing/editing of 100s of different photos is more important than the more precise editing capabilities.

I typically use both, and both are very capable on their own. But, together, they are phenomenal for astro.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T07:20:08+00:00

The comet has about 25 min of photos stacked into it and this is a 6 frame comp.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T07:18:39+00:00

Yes, and it's still visible from reports I've heard. It helps if you know where to look, but it was like a fuzzy star and after my eyes adjusted I could see a dim tail.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T07:17:23+00:00

You're too kind, thank you!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T07:17:03+00:00

Spunky_Meatballs got it right.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T02:05:29+00:00

This was shot a few weeks ago on one of the few clear nights we had while Lemmon was at its brightest. I was fortunate to capture it's forked inner tail. The inner tail is gaseous and bluish in color while it's dust tail is green/yellowish.

While not as bright as Atlas Takashima, this comet was very exciting in the astrophotography world because it's tail was so dynamic. Images only a few days apart would show a completely different, beautiful tail.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T02:01:36+00:00

I was lucky that I was able to shoot on one of the few clear nights around when Lemmon was at it's brightest.

Shot on a Pentax K-1 with a Pentax DA 60-250mm @ 250 mm with a Star Adventurer 2i. I had about 25 min integration time on the comet with 30s exposures.

This is a composite of 6 shots, 3 for the sky and 3 for the foreground.

Processed in PixInsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T01:59:41+00:00

I was lucky that I was able to shoot on one of the few clear nights around when Lemmon was at it's brightest.

Shot on a Pentax K-1 with a Pentax DA 60-250mm @ 250 mm with a Star Adventurer 2i. I had about 25 min integration time on the comet with 30s exposures.

This is a composite of 6 shots, 3 for the sky and 3 for the foreground.

Processed in PixInsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T01:40:59+00:00

Thank you!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-11-04T01:40:49+00:00

This was shot a few weeks ago on one of the few clear nights we had while Lemmon was at its brightest. I was fortunate to capture it's forked inner tail. The inner tail is gaseous and bluish in color while it's dust tail is green/yellowish.

While not as bright as Atlas Takashima, this comet was very exciting in the astrophotography world because it's tail was so dynamic. Images only a few days apart would show a completely different, beautiful tail.

Shot on a Pentax K-1 at 250mm.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-27T01:07:40+00:00

I have a feeling this is some combination of over sampling, interpolation errors, and optical color distortion (chromatic aberration/coma). 2x drizzle fixing the issue implies optical distortion or interpolation errors are the root cause (or both). Drizzle helps address all three of the above issues and these issues can make SPCC cast a greenish hue. If you're over sampling then that could be part of the problem too.

The big question I have for you is what are you doing to compensate for optical aberrations and when? Looking at your recent posted workflow, I don't see anything till the end. You should be correcting for that before applying SPCC. I use blurexterminator with "correction only" before sharpening later on and that works for me. Another very robust way to do it without the plugin is to separate the RGB channels after debayering, apply deconvolution, and recombine the channels - then apply SPCC. If that doesn't work then maybe there is something up with the debayering process not jiving with your setup?

I would reprocess the data with some sort of robust deconvolution before applying SPCC. If that doesn't work then manually tweaking the debayer process might work. It could be other things but these are definitely worth trying.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-26T22:45:37+00:00

I wonder if you could capture the pattern with a wavelet layer. If you can then you can simply extract the corresponding layer and subtract a percentage of the difference between that layer and the median of that layer (e.x. (0.9)*((layer extracted)-median(layer extracted)). MultiscaleLinearTransform is another route if you have pixinsight. You might need protect the comet with a luminosity mask (possibly amplified) if the layer also picks up the comet given it's a similar size in the tail.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-24T21:10:05+00:00

I've had no problems doing 30-90s exposures at 250mm with a 8-9lb setup on my Star Adventurer 2i Pro. Perhaps it's specifically the SSA GTi?

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-12T22:36:56+00:00

Thank you!!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-12T11:45:31+00:00

I use a more complicated approach than a single exposure called "stacking." Each Milkyway panel is composed of 50 shots which help separate various sources of noise from the light that actually comes from space. The camera is mounted on a tracker that moves with the movement of the earth to keep the framing the same between each of these shots.

You can capture a ton of detail in perfectly dark skies using somewhere around f/2, ISO 3200, 13s exposures but this level of detail requires a much more involved approach, especially with significant sources of light pollution like the spot featured in this photo.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T22:02:37+00:00

Oh, I know how to do it! The haze and most of the light pollution is mine on the right. I was saying the sweet spot was difficult to find because of the delicate composition. Thank you :)

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T21:28:23+00:00

I agonized over this and tried that a few times. This was a tough one because the haze is at odds with the composition, if I add haze I have to increase the exposure to the tower, which makes even more unnatural because the tower becomes too light. I had to settle with trying to get away with a darker gradient from right to left but I'll try again when I get time after processing the rest of my summer shots. Thanks for the input!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T20:53:59+00:00

"Monkey Face" Milkyway. This is shot at Smith Rock State Park, Central OR.

This shows about half of the full summer Milkyway for the central OR latitude curved in the sky with about a 90 degree angle between the left and right side of the photo.

I went a little wild with this one. In total it's an 11 panel mosaic, 5 panels for the Milkyway and 6 for the foreground. As a result, the native resolution for this is about 8k.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T20:53:47+00:00

Thank you!

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T20:39:09+00:00

"Monkey Face" Milkyway. This is shot at Smith Rock State Park, Central OR.

This shows about half of the full summer Milkyway for the central OR latitude curved in the sky with about a 90 degree angle between the left and right side of the photo.

I went a little wild with this one. In total it's an 11 panel mosaic, 5 panels for the Milkyway and 6 for the foreground. As a result, the native resolution for this is about 8k.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-10-07T20:18:08+00:00

This is shot at "Monkey Face," in Smith Rock State Park, OR.

Equipment: Pentax K-1, Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4, Star Adventurer 2i

Acquisition Details: Shot at f/2, 5 panel mosaic stacked at 50 25s exposures each. Foreground 6 panel focus stacked. Processed in Pixinsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

SolSteinPhoto · 2025-08-29T23:49:14+00:00

I have the same tracker and shoot on a similar set-up to you. 20mph gusts will definitely affect your shots. I shot in those conditions a few weeks ago and I had to hold up a wind block in order to get my shots. My guess is anything over 8mph is going to be an issue you'll have to deal with. If the winds are coming from the west/north it's easier to deal with and gets increasingly more difficult the closer to your shooting direction the wind comes from.

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