My photo club has organised a trip to a local observatory. I know pretty much nothing about astrophotography. The description on the website says (I assume this is the equipment we’ll be able to attach our cameras to – they have Nikon F and Canon EF adapters, so I hope I’ll be able to use my Nikon D7000):
(Translated from German using Google Translate)
Ritchey-Chrétien Astrograf
For several years now, a Ritchey Chrétien Astrograf (Pro RC 360) from Officina Stellare with a piggyback-mounted TEC refractor has been part of the “telescope park”. They are controlled by a GM4000QCI mount from 10micron. Both new telescopes are used primarily for astrophotography purposes, but also serve as additional observation devices.
How should I prepare? ISO / exposure time? Any typical blunders?
Like other Nikon SLRs, the D7000 accommodates a wide range of Nikkor lenses, via the standard Nikon “F” lens mount. - “Nikon D7000 Review - Optics.” 2024. Imaging Resource. 2024. Nikon D7000 Review - Optics…
Your Nikon should be fine. Just getting into astrophotography myself so I too will be interested in information as well.
What I have found is for a full moon photograph generally you start with the camera at F11, 1/250, ISO 400. This is supposed to pretty much be a middle of the road setting and you can adjust from there. That being said, a full moon is about 10% brightness at night +/- 2% and stars only will get you down to around 1-2%. (Training from my infantry days) A little math should get you the settings you want to know.
If you are doing sun photography then someone else might have some insight. Also, If this is normal for the observitory then I also image they will have some best practice information to achieve good results and a quick call to the information desk would be good research.
Looks like a solid mount! I didn’t dig too deep looks like it’s tracking mount which makes sense for astrophotography as opposed to visual astronomy.
I think it depends how much time you’re given to use it. Keep in mind some targets require hours of integration time to get decent results. While easier targets don’t. I’d suggest a target like Orion nebula or Flame & horsehead. Have them help you get your camera focused on the stars. Then try for 5-10 1-3 minutes exposures at somewhere between 800-3200iso. You could try to find Orion shots with your Nikon on astrobin for setting ideas. Stack the results in Siril.
I don’t shoot a lot deep space astrophotography. I mostly shoot Milky Way nightscapes.
That is so nice that they share their astrophotography equipments!
I generally activate long exposure noise reduction, it doubles the time of exposure because of the dark frame, but it works well. I think it is acceptable for 30-60 seconds exposures, but it becomes a burden for longer durations. Are they suggesting doing the dark frame manually once for each exposure time?
In my small astrophoto experience I’ve learned to disable camera image stabilization when using a tripod as it leads to weird movement patterns (with my Fuji X-T4), I don’t know how it works with other manufacturers.
And I’m sure the folks active in the Siril category also have valuable info. For me, this was a one-time event, so I will not spend time learning this topic now. Maybe later, because I do like astronomy and astro photos, and it’s also interesting from a technical point of view.
we prefer processing things with specialized software like siril than letting a camera do its suboptimal thing, unless you have only one image to process, which I don’t recommend either
