Earlier this month, I camped in Anza Borrego for a night with my friend Matt to try out some astrophotography. The camping itself went alright – it was cold, which I expected, but I did not think about how cold the ground was going to be when trying to sleep (didn’t bring a mat like a smart person).
I took about 700 pictures, each with a 5 second exposure, of the orion nebula with a camera that Matt let me borrow. I used Siril for post-processing, where I essentially followed this guide. I had trouble with the photometric color calibration step (kept on getting an error about plate solving) so I did the manual color calibration instead. This is the result:
my attempt at photographing the orion nebula
Orion’s nebula is down and to the right of orion’s belt. Matt’s results with Andromeda were much better. He took around 1000 photos with 1 ms of integration time (with a different camera).
Matt’s picture of Andromeda
I had a telescope with me as well but I kind of gave up on it half way through because it kept on disconnecting. Apparently, I wasn’t aligning it correctly either — I chose 3 close stars but I was supposed to choose 3 stars that were separate.
I think next time, I’d like to try a couple different things:
- using my pixel phone before buying a new camera
- align my old telescope properly – perhaps could find a camera attachment for it?
- star tracker? Matt is making one so it’d be cool to see that in action.
astrophotography is just spectroscopy in space