TUTORIALS
Below you will find all the Astrophotography tutorials we have written to help amateur astrophotographers progress faster in this hobby. This page will be updated continuously as we create more and more educational content. Whether you own a DSLR or a CCD camera, you should find something helpful below to push your night time photography skills forward. Most of these tutorials also have a video attached, which sometimes offers a little bit more details, so make sure to check them out!
These informational posts will teach you how to get better at Astrophotography in a wide range of topics. You will learn what are the best deep sky objects to image for each month of the year, how to properly set up your telescope, mount and accessories, how to photograph the moon, what settings to pick for imaging with both a DSLR camera and a CCD camera, and much more.
Several of these tutorials also discuss the choice of equipment to use for different occasions, or help you get familiar with your new Astrophotography camera.
We also give you image processing tips using PixInsight and Lightroom, and show you how we process our own raw files in depth. Download our full PixInsight guide HERE.
Below is the Fast Travel menu which you can use to quickly get to a specific tutorial on this page.
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top 15 astrophotography targets for all seasons
Do you have no idea what to image tonight?
You are motivated, eager to go out there and photograph the night sky but find yourself completely lost as to where to aim your telescope? We are here to help! We have compiled what we believe are the 60 best deep sky astrophotography targets to photograph for every month of the year.
Click on the current season below and simply pick one of the 15 deep sky objects listed to image tonight! Each of these astronomical objects are fairly large, bright, and easy to capture for beginner to advanced amateur astrophotographers.
If you would like to own a physical copy of this list, take a look at The Astrophotographer's Guidebook!
If you find this website useful and would like to support us, check out the cool benefits on Patreon!
Click the banner above to go to our PixInsight learning page, where we add all PixInsight-related tutorials over time. Because of the software's steep learning curve, we do our best to keep these guides short and easy to follow.
If you would like to download a PDF version of our own processing workflow, step-by-step, you can do so HERE. Included is a 75-page PDF guide and a 1 hour and 45 minutes full walkthrough tutorial video.
Condensed tutorials
How to Collimate
Do you own a Newtonian telescope but aren't sure how to collimate your mirrors before imaging?
Learn how to easily collimate your telescope in just 90 seconds!
How to focus
Getting perfect focus before imaging is essential. Thankfully, it can be done very easily!
Learn how to focus your camera attached to your telescope in just 90 seconds! Watch the video to see the entire process from our point of view.
How to edit a time-lapse
Not sure how to recreate those peaceful night time videos you keep seeing online?
Learn how to assemble and edit a series of photos to form a beautiful time-lapse using both Lightroom and any video editing software.
How to focus a DSLR lens
If you plan on doing wide-field Astrophotography, you will definitely need to ensure that your camera lens is correctly focused.
In this tutorial, we show you the quickest and easiest way to get pinpoint stars with any lens.
Other tutorials
MORE TO COME
We are writing several useful tutorials, please visit this page again soon to see more!