The Radian Raptor 61 is a triplet apochromatic refractor telescope for astrophotography. It features a compact design with features custom-suited for wide-field, deep-sky astrophotography. Since the Raptor arrived in September, I have taken some of my best astrophotography images to date with it. In this review, I’ll share all of the image examples I have…
A full-frame camera has a larger image sensor, which means you can capture a wider field of view through your telescope or lens. This can help you create larger astrophotos, (in terms of both image resolution in pixels, and file size). While it might seem like upgrading from a crop-sensor camera to a full-frame model…
The AstroBackyard Backyard of the Week highlights astrophotography setups from around the world. A “backyard” can be a balcony, driveway, garden, or wherever else you set up astrophotography equipment at home. By taking a behind-the-scenes look at the equipment amateur astrophotographers use to take deep-sky images, you can get a better understanding of the process….
The AstroBackyard Backyard of the Week highlights astrophotography setups from around the world. We break down each piece of the system so you can understand exactly what goes into a successful imaging kit. This week’s backyard astrophotography equipment profile comes to us from Christopher Mills from Michigan, USA. Chris uses a Samyang 135mm F/2 (Rokinon…
The Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443) is a supernova remnant located in the constellation Gemini. This nebula is approximately 5000 light-years from Earth and is estimated to be roughly 70 light-years in size. In the wide-field telescopic view below, you’ll notice two bright stars, Tejat, and Propus (Tejat Prior). The locate the Jellyfish Nebula with your…
On this website, I do my best to share information and astrophotography tips that provide value. I could pat myself on the back about all of the great astrophotography images I took this year, but it is of little interest to anyone if I don’t explain how I took the shot. In this article, I’ll…
The Lobster Claw Nebula (Sharpless 157) is a bright emission nebula. It lies near the edge of the northern constellation Cassiopeia, bordering on Cepheus. As you’ll soon see in my long-exposure image, this bright HII region is surrounded by many more interesting deep-sky objects. It sits very close in the sky to another popular emission…
In early May 2020, I decided to purchase a Canon EOS Ra camera from B&H photo. This is Canon’s latest astrophotography camera, and it has some seriously impressive specs (like a full-frame 30.3 MP astro-modified sensor). For a complete rundown of the Canon EOS Ra, you can read my full review from January of this…
The Canon EOS Ra camera is Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera dedicated to astrophotography. It is suitable for deep-sky imaging with a telescope, and night sky photography with a camera lens. Based off of the extremely popular EOS R, the EOS Ra boasts unique features such as 30x magnification (viewfinder and Live View) for precise…
In this post, I’ll walk you through the image processing steps I used to create the image of the Andromeda Galaxy shown below. This astrophotography tutorial uses Adobe Photoshop to bring out the intense colors and detail of a galaxy that was photographed using a DSLR camera and a small telescope. You can follow along…
In this post, I’ll share my results using the Optolong L-eNhance filter for deep sky astrophotography in the city. The L-eNhance is a dual band pass filter that ignores artificial light, yet collects a strong signal emitted by certain nebulae. This light pollution filter was designed for color cameras, whether it’s a DSLR (a modified…
This section of the AstroBackyard website is here for you to hone your astrophotography image processing skills. It is very interesting to see different takes on the same data set, using a variety of software to get the job done. Astrophotography images require careful image processing techniques to reveal the faint and beautiful details that…