A Hitchhikers guide to Astrophotography - Mobile edition

This winter, with the galaxy season incoming in the northern hemisphere, it's time for amateur astronomers to rip open their cameras to photograph the skies. Capturing a beautiful piece of the night sky is easier than it seems, one just needs the right gear and sacrificing a few hours of sleep. So let's get started, these are the crucial steps:

1. Look for clear skies

Astronomy heavily relies in the weather conditions for the best results. So, it's preferred to find a cloudless night to plan your shootings. Astroweather is a useful app specifically designed to cater skygazing needs, a lifesaver while planning shoots.

It's also absolutely important to get as far away from city lights as possible, a good dark place with stars clearly visible is a gold mine for astro photos. To find the local light pollution, use this site

2. Preparing for the shoot

Either a DSLR or phone, it's first to learn to properly learn capturing objects in low light conditions. We use the highest possible exposure time (measured in sec) to gather as much light as possible. Increasing the time too much leads to the stars trailing away from the frame, for beginners a 8-10 sec shot for phone is sufficient.

The ISO particularly affects the sensitivity of the sensor, you can play around with it to get the most stars in the picture. ISO 800-1600 is conventional .

A tripod stand or a stable surface is of utmost necessity. Good photos can only be taken while the sensor is stable, even a temporary stand like a water bottle is enough.

3. The shoot

It's convenient to look for the target you're willing to capture well before in advanced. We use applications like Stellarium to locate deep sky objects.

Clear dark skies and phones lead to some amazing photos. Just keep the ISO and exposure high, use a timer to remove the jiggle it would feel while you click the shutter and see the results.

4. Post-processing

Use a photo editing app like Adobe Lightroom to enhance your footage. The simple procedure is:

• Crop extra elements

Removing trees, building etc. reduces heterogeneity in pixels which make editing easier

• Go to curves -> Add a suitable S-curve

Curves modify the intensity of highlights/shadows of the image. We generally enhance highlights (stars) and darken shadows (the sky)

• Calibrate Saturation, Vibrance, Tint to increase the signal

These settings make the stars pop out brilliantly, use them sparingly though

• Denoise the image

Weird patches of light and hot pixels need to be removed. Softwares are sufficiently good at this

• Export and share

When you're happy with the results, feel free to share it in the club. We're always eager to view some night sky wonders, especially from newcomers. Hoping for a myriad of photos!!

To Infinity and beyond

- Soumadip (MS22)

Image credits : Myself :)