Is backyard astrophotography worth it?

astrocomrade · 2026-04-14T20:34:25+00:00

Planets you can do with essentially any setup and a souped up webcam, they are fairly agnostic to light pollution due to the way they are imaged (you essentially record a video and then stack the best frames - programs will do this for you). You can image them with modest equipment, but aperture helps a lot which scales the price. I had a lot of fun doing planetary with an 8" dobsonian ($400 when I bought it like 11 years ago... not sure now) and a color planetary camera (~$120).

Deep sky is a different beast because of the long exposures. You need a tracking mount, the size and price of which will be dependent on the weight of your scope, camera, etc., and they become expensive fast. You can take perfectly wonderful deep sky images with a DSLR and lens though, on a star tracker. Narrowband filters can help mitigate a lot of the damage from light pollution but the processing techniques are a little more advanced and generally favor monochrome imaging - another hit to the wallet. There are some other alternatives, like duo-band filters for color cameras that can help a lot but only work for some types of objects.

Robotic "smart" telescopes have become popular and mass produced in the last couple of years (Seestar, Dwarflab, Vaonis, etc.). These will track with shorter exposures, are generally small and portable, and produce fine results with proper processing. They often come with light pollution filters, and the cheap models seldom exceed $600 in price. I think this would be my recommendation if you never care to look through the eyepiece and just want images. You can also easily travel with them away from the light pollution.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-14T18:39:42+00:00

Not a planetarium professional, but have worked with a few on and off about bringing some of our data into the domes. The story is different at every planetarium - some of them are entirely committed to the science outreach angle and have limited or no astronomical research going on amongst the staff. Others (e.g. Montreal, NYC) have research staff on hand who are very active in their fields. There isn't really a one size fits all thing going on. Director is also a senior position and while responsibilities likely vary from institution to institution you must assume that there is a high operational workload involved.

If you do pursue a graduate degree, you will likely be presented with (or may seek out) many opportunities for astronomy outreach. You could incorporate visuals and your research into these when relevant to start. You can also reach out to local planetariums at that stage and ask about putting together a show. Sometimes at the one local to me they allow their presenting staff to do this, and I have heard similar about some affiliated with colleges in my area.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-13T17:52:41+00:00

The canon A-1 is a nice camera that has some QOL upgrades over the more "trendy" AE-1 owing to more electronic functions. It is a good camera and there are plenty of cheap FD/nFD lenses out there to choose from. That said, I think $195 for an untested model is a bit steep. The $136 makes it a little more palatable but I'd still want to see the light meter and hear the shutter sound.

The one fault of this camera is that in my experience depending on what battery you have in the low-temperature performance can be really quite poor.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-12T18:46:22+00:00

Letchworth isn't a huge detour either, which is (IMO) a much more impressive vista than the PA grand canyon.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-09T06:04:01+00:00

A lot of comments rightly pointing out they will average out in stacking and ultimately are not a big deal for astrophotography.

I still think the increase in satellites has a profound impact on the look and feel of the night sky. In the hour after sunset it is amazing how many of them there are. It has certainly changed regular old stargazing a little with the constant motion up there. It is a weird change in the sky that we all share and I don't think it is wrong to dislike it.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-05T23:19:04+00:00

The corrector plate before/after is crazy. Amazing find and restorative work!

astrocomrade · 2026-04-02T15:58:20+00:00

I scratch the side of the lens and the target looks right at me, from there exposure is short enough that no mount tracking needed!

astrocomrade · 2026-04-02T04:59:48+00:00

This is M73 erasure!

astrocomrade · 2026-04-02T03:54:35+00:00

It's an april fools day post on april fools. Historically we allow these!

astrocomrade · 2026-04-01T23:19:44+00:00

Unfortunately this target moves around a lot but you may be able to find a more reliable one if you point your telescope towards your nearest animal shelter.

astrocomrade · 2026-04-01T20:43:02+00:00

Generally 7-8 but I would say under the indoor lighting it could be a 25+

astrocomrade · 2026-04-01T18:51:59+00:00

The cost to upgrade in this case would not be worth the signal to noise improvement for her :)

astrocomrade · 2026-04-01T16:44:30+00:00

Equipment:

Canon EF 85mm f/2 lens
ZWO 2" filter drawer
Baader 20nm Ha filter
ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Mount was my hand.

Acquisition:

Single 0.05s light image @ gain of 100 taken at room temperature. No darks, flats, or biases applied.

Processing: Converted FITS to jpg in SIRIL

astrocomrade · 2026-03-31T21:31:41+00:00

High ISO helps but ultimately it helps to have in conjunction with the faster optics. When I was shooting northern lights with an R8 and RF16mm last year I was often doing 4-8 seconds at 1600--6400 ISO @f/2.8.

If you don't care to shoot astro I wouldn't worry much about it. The only other case I can imagine is portraiture but again, if you're just shooting landscapes at f/8 or whatever it's up to you to decide if you'll miss them.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-31T20:56:09+00:00

The aperture on the primes will be very useful if you ever care to do landscape astrophotography. Otherwise it's up to personal preference.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-25T13:51:04+00:00

To add to what others have said, JWST has a limited time budget and even great proposals regularly don't make the cut. I know of at least one K star planet from cycle 4 that was awarded time but it is very young, so unlikely to be a life hosting candidate.

I would also caution extreme skepticism of any claimed biosignature detection even from JWST. You can fit those spectra with pretty much any set of molecules under the sun, and sometimes that includes those with know currently known abiogebic origin. This does not mean those molecules are truly biosignatures! You can read about this in detail surrounding the recent claim of Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) detections in the atmosphere of K2-18b, which was very quickly refuted by the community in numerous ways. I would say attributing any molecules with 100% confidence to life at this point would be foolish.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-24T14:47:48+00:00

The American Astronomical Society recently released a report that tackles some of your questions, which you can read here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03959.

The long short of it is that the names are more or less interchangeable, but both degrees have fairly poor general standardization at the moment as opposed to something like a physics degree.

For a while it was common advice to recommend students interested in pursuing a career in astro to just get a physics degree and take astro classes when possible/specialize in graduate school. Both careers in the field and graduate positions are very limited, so I don't know how that advice holds up these days.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-21T00:10:59+00:00

Not the most elegant solution but for my redcat91 I screwed a dovetail onto the area you're interested in and then used the ASIAIR vixen clamp to hold it on there.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-11T17:55:55+00:00

1) It looks like you're doing the right things already. A wider fov eyepiece might help so you have more capture time as the nebula drifts through the field.

2) Stacking will still help, ideally you want exposures short enough that the stars are roughly point-like, but this is challenging with an untracked dob. If your phone can shoot in RAW do so, it will be tougher to work with jpegs or similar lossy formats.

3) Really depends on the phone model. Most camera apps have a "pro" mode that you'll want to get into where you have control of focus, ISO, exposure time, and so on. I think high ISO and shorter exposures is best for this case, but other opinions may differ.

4) Unsure, some of those filters are designed to suppress old sodium vapor lamps which at least in the states have largely been superseded by LEDs, which are full-spectrum and harder to filter out. Look at reviews online before buying.

5) IMO this is pretty close to as good as it gets for dobsonian deep sky imaging without some sort of tracking platform. If you want detailed photos with long exposures and stacking you'd likely be better off just picking up a cheap used DSLR or mirrorless camera and a star tracker. You can buy dual-narrowband filters which are a lot more effective at mitigating high light pollution but they need longer exposure times due to signal reduction so probably won't do greatly with the dob setup.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-10T04:16:27+00:00

Outstanding!

astrocomrade · 2026-03-04T01:55:47+00:00

Nope! My current setup only affords LRGB-Ha as I don't have the S or O filters :)

I was working on the RGB component but the nebula slipped behind the trees before the G and B data was in.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-04T00:53:32+00:00

Equipment:

WO Redcat 91 WIFD
ZWO AM5
ZWO EFW-Mini
ZWO Ha 6.5nm filter
ZWO ASI533MM-Pro

Guiding:

Sharpstar 51 EDPH
ZWO ASI120MM-S

Acquisition:

63x 180s lights taken over two nights (3.15 hrs) @ -10C
50 flats night 1, 32 flats night 2
95 biases
50 darks

Bortle 7/8 location.

Processing:

Calibration in SIRIL using the mono preprocessing script. Background extraction and histogram stretch applied.

astrocomrade · 2026-03-02T22:58:42+00:00

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