What is Astrophotography?

Astrophotography is a specialized type of photography that entails recording images of astronomical objects and large areas of the night sky.

Sure, anyone with a grade 6 education can figure out that the term “Astro” and “Photography” means taking pictures of space related stuff, but NASA and other space agencies around the world have been doing that for years, right? Yes.. and no..

Our friends over at the Astro Pic of the Day are great for giving us the long distance many-hour exposure and stacked images, but those are generally done from data with a land-based giant telescope, or satellite in space. Anyone can do those.. right?.. right?

Below are what I consider real Astrophotography, amateur and semi-pro hobbiest taking photos of things we generally only ever see from professional sources. Some of the detail you can get with a simple 6″ cheap telescope from Amazon, up to 12″ reflectors costing thousands. It’s a very welcoming hobby, if you want to stay up late, out in an empty field, usually alone or with a group, taking photos.

Now, just attaching an iPhone or similar device, or going all nerd-mode and getting a Digital SLR camera mount can all be ways of snapping photos like the above, but you need to do some maths. Sorry, yes, math is really a huge part of Astronomy, and Photography. There’s focal lengths, the micro-movements of matching the rotating Earth to the orbits of objects, among other things I’m not even going to bullshit my way through, and have no idea how to further explain.. so go ask a photographer 🙂

Above images were taken from Reddit’s Astrophotography community found here!