c/astronomy-photos

Just learned how much of the Hubble Deep Field image is actually empty space

Read it's like 99.999% nothing, which is wild to think about when you look at all those galaxies. Anyone know a good place to find the highest resolution version online?

TIL most people think the Milky Way is just a white streak in photos

I was showing my friend a picture I took of the night sky from Joshua Tree last week, and he said 'oh, just the Milky Way again.' But the photo had so much color and dust lanes you could see with a 30 second exposure! People keep calling it a simple white cloud, but it's full of red hydrogen gas and dark nebula shapes. I think phone cameras and light pollution make it look flat. Has anyone else noticed this or found a good way to explain the real details to friends?

Polar alignment eats up my clear night time. Then clouds roll in.

My city view of the Pleiades showed me editing isn't everything

A lot of folks in here say you have to heavily edit every astro photo to make it good. I tried taking a picture of the Pleiades cluster from my apartment roof last month. I used a basic camera and a tripod, no fancy software. The raw image came out with some haze from street lights. Instead of editing it heavily, I just adjusted the brightness a bit. Seeing those stars through the glow felt like a real achievement. It reminded me that sometimes the simple shots have their own charm.

I'm baffled by the love for super-saturated galaxy pics.

The cosmos is stunning without extra color!

My time-lapse of the night sky is mostly clouds and a curious owl

The owl stared into the lens for a solid twenty minutes.

Heads up: almost deleted my whole comet shoot by mistake

I was cleaning up old files on my laptop and nearly erased a folder with my latest comet photos. Didn't have a backup because I thought I'd moved them already. Had to dig through trash bins and luckily found most of them. Now I label everything clearly and backup right after each session. Trust me, you don't want to stress like I did.

Unpopular opinion: My family talks through every cool space picture I show

I finally got a clear shot of the Orion Nebula after weeks of trying. My brother came over and just scrolled on his phone while I explained it. Then my aunt said it just looks like a smudge and asked what the big deal is. Now I keep my best astronomy photos to myself because no one at home seems to care. It kind of takes the fun out of sharing this hobby.

After another blurry M31 shot, I had to drop my no-edit rule for astro photos

I used to believe editing astronomy photos was cheating because I figured if you can't get it right in the camera, you're not doing it right. So I never edited my raw files from my telescope. Last week, I aimed at the Andromeda Galaxy again. I spent all night taking pictures, but the result was just a dim, noisy smear. I felt so angry and defeated. Then someone in this community posted their processed image of M31, and it showed clear spiral arms and dust lanes. They said they only used basic software to pull out the data. Now I see how wrong I was, and I'm frustrated I wasted so much time on bad images.

After boosting colors in my moon shot, it doesn't look right anymore

I got a clear photo of the moon during the last eclipse. I upped the saturation so the craters stood out, but now it seems overdone. Do you ever worry about making space photos look too fake?

Found my childhood telescope photos, and the sky was actually BLACK.

I was sorting through a box in the attic and found these old snaps. Now when I try from the same window, it's just a fuzzy ORANGE blob from all the new lights. Do you think we'll ever get serious about dark sky preserves?

Showing off my nebula pic got a wild guess from the mailman

I printed a cool photo of the Orion Nebula from my backyard telescope. The mailman saw it on my table and asked if it was a new abstract painting from the local art fair. He spent five minutes trying to figure out what the 'colors and shapes' meant. I finally told him it was a cloud of gas in space, and he just nodded slowly. Now he gives me a weird look every time he delivers a package.

Raw files made my star trails actually look like stars

I used to rely on auto settings for all my night shots. The trails always came out blurry and dull. Switching to manual raw capture let me control the exposure perfectly. Now each point of light is crisp and the colors are deep. It turned my hobby from frustrating to amazing overnight.

Always thought autofocus was fine for planets, but Jupiter came out as a blob and I had to eat my words.

Spent a weekend in the hills for star trails, now I'm debating travel vs. local.

I drove to a quiet hill area to take pictures of star trails. The photos came out sharp with no light around. But a friend gets nice shots from his town using computer programs. I like the trip, but it takes time and gas. How do you pick between travel and staying near for astronomy photos?

Showerthought: Developing star photos used to take patience, but now my neck aches from hunching over a laptop.

Editing all those Milky Way shots on a computer gives me serious back pain. Sometimes I wish I could just point a film camera and be done with it.