Exploring Night Sky » Astrophotography

Apr 16

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Deep Sky, Nightscapes, Tutorial 6 comments

Optolong light pollution filters

If you’ve read my other blog post about light pollution filters, you know I love them and they work really well especially with Deep sky images. Like all other products in the market, there are several brands that make the same product (similar), one of the companies that make these awesome light pollution filters is Optolong Recently, Optolong reached out to me and was asking about my experience with light pollution filters and they mentioned about one of their latest filters “L-Pro” filter, The description sounds good for the same, but you can’t tell unless you use it. I wasn’t in the market for new filters but asked them if they would like to send me their filters so I can test them out and yeah!!! they agreed and sent me 3 filters. CLS (City Light Suppression) UHC (Ultra High Contrast) L-Pro (L-Professional) CLS and UHC are really good for deep sky photography, as they provide less transmission of light pollutants and enhancing the contrast between the background sky and the nebula. CLS: Gives better results for objects that emit light in a broader spectrum, objects like reflection nebulae UHC: Gives better results for objects that emit light in a […]

Nov 26

by Amit Kamble in New Zealand, Nightscapes, Travel 0 comments tags: glow worms, mclaren falls park, new zealand, night, tauranga

Glow Worms – New Zealand

I’ve been attempting to shoot a proper timelapse video of the glowworms at McLaren Falls and every time I’ve been there to shoot, something went wrong, but I finally managed to get some decent footage over the weekend. I’ve fallen for this location ever since I first saw them, I’ve been there for hours staring and being fascinated by these little creatures of the dark. This time, I took my little chair, some food and drinks and just sat there as my camera did the painstaking task of shooting. It was funny when people walked around the tracks and looked at me as if I was some sort of lunatic, just lounging there with all the snacks. It’s a must visit place for locals and anyone visiting Tauranga. Would love to spend more time here and take a really long and awesome time-lapse in the future. Shot using Samyang 24mm f1.4, Canon 50mm f1.8 on Canon 6D and motion using SYRP Genie mini

May 29

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Nightscapes, Tutorial 2 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, astrophotography, comparison, east cape lighthouse, Light Polluted Location, lighthouse, nightscape, Nightscapes, photoshop, processing

A 5sec Exposure – East Cape Lighthouse

Often when you talk about astrophotography, first things that come to mind are Long Exposure and High ISO. For most of the time this is true but then there are times when you cannot use both at the same time and sometimes you just have to stick to short exposure times. Sometimes, the images produced with a short exposure will not have much detail of the sky, but if you are a dark site, it is sufficient enough to capture those details. I recently visited East Cape lighthouse, which is the easternmost point of New Zealand to capture the milky way rising next to the lighthouse. This was my first time so I did not know what to expect. These beautiful beams going across the sky looked so beautiful and I wanted to capture them with the milky way rising. As usual, I set up my camera to a 20sec exposure, ISO 6400, f/2.8 and not to be surprised but the lighthouse was overexposed and I did not capture any of those beams. A bit disappointed, I tried again with slow exposure and got better. Then I thought, the reason I am not capturing the beams is because, when on […]

Apr 17

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Deep Sky 2 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, Astronomik, Astronomik 12nm Ha Filter, Astronomik CLS Filter, Astronomik filters comparison, Astronomik UHC Filter, astrophotography, comparison, Deep Sky

Astronomik filters comparison

I have been using the Astronomik CLS Filter for the last few years to get rid of light pollution in my astrophotos. The filter has done a really good job so far and have given me some good results, specially when doing deep sky astrophotography. I was planning on modifying my Canon 6D for astrophotography, so it is more sensetive to H-alpha. But before I could completely modify my camera, i wanted to give some other astronomik filters a try. Specially the UHC Filter and 12nm Ha Filter as these filters only allow narrow wavelengths (specially the 12nm Halpha.) Below is a comparison for the CLS and UHC transmission chart. As you can see from the above images, UHC filter has a narrow transmission and thus gets rid of any unwanted light (City Lights) The result of shooting through the UHC filter is that you get a better sky contrast hence the name UHC (Ultra High Contrast), The UHC works better on any kind of emission nebula: When a nebula is emitting light only at certain wavelengths, you may block everything else to get a very dark background with a high contrast: That´s the intention of the Astronomik UHC. I […]

Apr 16

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Deep Sky, Tutorial 0 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, astrophotography, Deep Sky, ioptron, iOptron skyguider, LMC, photoshop, pixinsight tutorial, processing

LMC Processing – PixInsight Tutorial

I recently uploaded an image of LMC which is probably one of the best images i’ve processed so far. As i was processing the image, i decided to record the process, so i can upload that as a tutorial as in the past few people have asked about the processing. I used pixinsight for processing and photoshop for final touches. Keep a look around as i upload more videos. Here is a 11 part video series that shows the processing workflow.

Apr 14

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Deep Sky 0 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, astrophotography, Deep Sky, LMC

Large Magellan Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of all the dwarf satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, it’s tiny in comparison with the Milky Way’s 200-plus billion stars – the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is thought to contain around 30 billion stars, Persian astronomer Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi wrote about the ‘clouds’ over a thousand years ago, but it wasn’t until explorer Ferdinand Magellan travelled south and wrote about them in the 14th century that their existence became common knowledge – and it’s his name they bear. The Large Magellanic Cloud seems to orbit the Milky Way, bound by its gravity. In the distant future it may be torn apart and absorbed by our galaxy. The LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way and is thought to be about 160,000 light-years away. Without visual aids the Large Magellanic Cloud look like a roughly rectangular patch of light, but with decent binoculars or a small telescope you can see nebulae strewn through the LMC. The most outstanding of these is the Tarantula Nebula – the most active star-forming region in the 30-odd galaxies including the Milky Way that make up the Local Group. It’s named for its […]