Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is James Manning. I'm going to share with you how to plan your night sky photographs. We're going to talk about when the Milky Way is at its highest, when the stars are at their most brilliant. So that you can understand the science behind planning your shots. I'm also going to share some great apps that can be used with your smart phone to help you to plan your shots, to predict the weather, and to do some scouting using GPS maps. I hope you find this tutorial really helpful. I know these things were hard for me to learn initially and are often not covered under normal astrophotography tutorials. Please join the class.
2. Equipment: All right, well, first things first, I want to talk about equipment. Let's make sure you have what it takes to take some great Astro photography images. We need a camera. There are a lot of cameras out there that can take these photos, but here are some very basic requirements I would be looking for. It needs to be able to take a good image at least 2,000 ISO. So that has to have the sensitivity of your sensor, the ISO. You just don't want it to be too noisy when you're pushing it that intensely. Another thing you need is a good wide angle lens. When I say wide angle, that means a focal length of at least 35 or wider. So 28, 24, 16, 14, all of those will be good. You want the widest aperture, the F value to be 2.8 or lower, or a larger in size. So the one I shoot with this is 16, excuse me. This is a 24 1.4 and I shoot a full frame camera, So that's true to size. I usually shoot around f2. So I definitely take advantage of that wide aperture. But just make sure you have a fast enough lens and it's nothing longer focal length that 35. Now this is optional. You don't necessarily need this. This is an interval ometer. It'll help you to take long exposures shots. If your camera can go up to 30 seconds without having used the bulb feature, you're all set. Again, this is still handy and it helps to look tripod, shake and things like that. But all I do is set a delay, a timer on the camera, put it out however many seconds I need. I often, even though I have this, Don't bring it because it's just it's another thing to fiddle around within the dark. During the dark, It's good to have a good light. Now, a headlamp, especially a decent, powerful headlamp, work really well for this. If it has a red light feature that's even better. But I use this guy, very bright, and it helps to illuminate the foreground scene when I'm doing some landscape shots and I really want to bring some detail into the foreground, which I often do. So a flashlight, little lightbox like this, headlamp. Any of that can work even your cell phone, but it's pitch black out there you need some good, reliable light source. Of course you need a great, sturdy tripod. My tripod was filming this right now, but everyone knows what a tripod is. It doesn't need to be lightweight compact. Just something that's steady will be really important for these longer 22nd plus exposures. So as long as you have all that, you're good to go.
3. Planning: All right, now that we know you have all the right equipment, we're going to talk about planning. Here's where we're going to talk about the astronomy that you need to know to plan out your shots from the time of the year to the day and the weather that you'll need to factor in. After we do that we'll move on to some apps that will really help in this process. Let's get started. First, let's talk about the time of a year. Depending on what you're trying to photograph, will depend on when during the year you'll want to capture it. If it's the Milky Way, it's most brilliant during the summer. Same with Mars. If it's a specific constellation, that might be winter or spring for that matter. It's important to consider this when you're thinking about your subject and how best you should capture it. Since most people are interested in the Milky Way, I'm going to explain that a little bit. Here we have our planet and we are out there at night. We're looking out to the south and here's our Milky Way. Let's say it's spring time. Notice that we're only seeing the top portion of the Milky Way. We're not seeing that brilliant galactic center that's in the lower portion of this scene. But in the summertime when the Earth's axis is tilted and in the Northern Hemisphere we're tilted towards the sun. Then we get to see the lower portion of the Milky Way where that galactic center is, which is the most dramatic, brilliant heart of the Milky Way that we can capture. To put this into context, here's the Milky Way galaxy. When we look out at night, all we're seeing are stars within this milky way galaxy. We're right around here. Now the Milky Way is shaped like a disk and that means that if we look within the same plane as the Milky Way galaxy, we're going to see a greater concentration of stars. That's what appears to us as what we refer to the Milky Way galaxy when we look out at night and you look in the right place in the sky. If you look south, you're looking towards the galactic center where the stars are most concentrated. If you keep looking up as the band goes above your head, you're still looking within that plane of the overall galaxy and you can even look north and you'll see the Milky Way. It just won't be as brilliant as if you are looking towards the center. This is going to be a refresher for a lot of people. But I think it's important to really understand in a visual way how the phases of the moon work. This is going to determine when, within any given month, you're going to want to shoot. Here we are on our Earth. The moon is out and there the sun illuminating the moon. From this orientation, us looking at the moon, it appears full and bright. Not a good time to be photographing the night sky unless the moon is your subject. Now, as this moon revolves around the Earth, in one week if we are to look at it now, this is what's called a quarter moon. It's still too bright to photograph the stars as well. Another week passes. We have the new moon, because we are looking at the Moon and it's in between us and the sun. The sun is actually shining on the opposite side of the moon and we're seeing the dark side of the moon. Obviously, this is the best time to be photographing the night sky. As you can imagine, another week passes and it'll go back to being a quarter moon. Then another week it'll be a full moon. When is the best time to photograph? The new moon, plus or minus three days, I would say. This does vary slightly depending on the time of night you're out. When we talk about the different [inaudible] , I'll explain how you can figure out when the moon will not be out, even if it's the quarter moon. You can work around this if you're willing to be flexible especially if you are willing to stay up quite late into the night. Finally, when it comes to scheduling when to shoot. Let's talk about the time of day. Once the sun sets, as we all know, it doesn't get dark immediately. In fact there are several different twilights, whether it's civil, nautical, or astronomical twilight, that occur before nighttime occurs. In fact, we have to wait until the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon before it's completely night and completely dark for star-scape photography. Why is that? Well, the sun when it's below the horizon isn't able to directly shine on the earth, but it is able to shine on the atmosphere. That atmosphere makes it still light out even when the sun is below the horizon. Of course, we also have refraction and that plays a role as well. How long do you have to wait for this to happen? About one to two hours depending on where you are, what time of year, that thing and depending on how dark you really want it for your scene. At least an hour. But two hours is great. To recap all of this, what time of year? It really depends. But if you're trying to capture the milky way, get out there in the summer. The time of month? The new moon is best, plus or minus a few days is fine. What time of day? One to two hours after the sun sets below the horizon.
4. Apps: All right, so here we're going to talk about apps. This is where I'll tell you how I do my scouting, how I identify whether the weather conditions are most appropriate and a few other things, such as the phases of the moon, the height of the Milky Way galaxy, et cetera. Let's dive in. There are five basic apps which I use every time I think about going out and shooting. One of these app's the Photographer's Ephemeris. I'm not going to go into any detail. I don't use it regularly, but I do think it's an awesome app, especially if you like to get geeky about technology. It allows you to not only look at a map, but also the topography of that area of the map and plan your shot based on the height of the moon, relative to the height of your topography or like a mountain or a building and it will even show you the sunsets and sunrise times in a visual format. Anyway, check it out. It's free if you look it on a desktop but I'm not going to go into it any further. The basic thing you need to be able to have is an app that tells you about the weather. I use NOAA, it's cost a little bit of money, but an any weather app will do. I like NOAA, because it provides a nice radar view and I basically use this for screening whether or not there is going to be a good time to shoot that week. I'll look out into the forecast and I'll see in the evening is it going to be cloudy or is it not? Then I'll pick a day that I think, hey, maybe it's clear. Let's take a look at this in more detail and then I'll switch to the night shift. This is a great little app for seeing when the best window the shooters relative to the weather and when the moon rises and sets. It's going to take into account how clear it is out and it's going to take into account how much of the moon is present. Whether it's a full moon, new moon, or crescent moon and the time that it sets and basically give you, here's your ideal window on this night to go out and shoot if there is one. That's really handy, especially for astrophotographers like us. The SW maps is the next app I'm going to look at here. This isn't for everyone. It's basically a GIS program. It's not too cumbersome, but if you're intimidated by it, it's not essential. But basically what it does is when I'm out, driving around, scouting for location, or maybe I'm just out running some errands, whatever it might be, I might come upon a location that I think is a really good fit for a photograph. This allows me to tag that location on the map, maybe write a little note about it and even take a picture and assign that to the pin for the location I've found. When it comes to night time, it's hard to find certain locations just based off of memory, when it's the middle of the night. You might have found a really cool barn during the day time. You are like, "It's on that one road. Feel like it was a couple miles past that one intersection." This really clears up all that and makes it so that you can find the locations that you've scouted out ahead of time. Sky Safari is an app that allows you to visualize the night sky at a particular day and time. I use it primarily to determine when the Milky Way is at its highest on that night. We learned in the summer, is when the Milky Way is at its highest. But the Milky Way, just like the moon, goes through a bit of a rise and set, or more or less it just moves up and down throughout the evening and there was a time when it is at its highest even if it's summer for that night. For example, when I was out shooting, in May, it was the end of May. Not quite summer yet, but Milky Way was definitely out and if I were to go through this app, I could see at four o'clock in the morning, the Milky Way was going to be high enough that I can get a shot that I would be happy with. This is a really important app for determining what time of day you might want to get out and shoot if the milky way is what you're going for. It can also be helpful if you're shooting the moon, what height it's at, or maybe finding certain constellations. Also in the wintertime, you can use it to preview the night sky even if you are not going for the Milky way. Maybe you can find a cool concentration of stars or a unique set of stars that you think would make a good shot and you can determine what orientation you want to basing. Maybe you like the way the sky looks to the west. That's going to be really helpful information when scouting a good location for your shop. Terra Time is a nice little reference utility for when the sun rises and sets and when the moon rises and sets. I particularly like it because as I use Android, I'm able to use the widget that comes with Terra Time and I can put it on my desktop or my home screen and basically, at just a glance I can see what the moon cycle is at right now and when it's going to rise and set and when the sunset is going to occur. Really helpful for me and I use it quite frequently. I hope you find all that useful. These apps are a really helpful bits of technology for you to get the information you need to determine when to shoot, what orientation to shoot at, what time of night to shoot at, how to keep track of your scouting. A lot of really useful things that I think you'll find you'll use quite regularly once you get the hang of it. If you do have any more questions about how to use these apps, or maybe you use an iPhone and you'd like to find some good alternatives that work on iPhone, please feel free to ask and I'll be happy to help you.
5. Conclusion: Thanks so much for taking this class. I hope you've got a lot out of it and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Happy stargazing.
James Manning
