as ways of augmenting the actual sky image itself. Wide field night sky imaging is often an extension of landscape photography, frequently involving the use of foreground silhouetted of trees or landscape forms, light painting of foreground and midfield terrestrial objects and landscapes, etc. These forms of astrophotography have the lowest barrier to entry, requiring your average photography equipment, a stable tripod, and an intervolometer or some other way of taking long, hands-free exposures.
This includes your Milky Way imaging, your Star Trails imaging, and your Meteor Shower imaging. The simplest forms of astrophotography are ultra wide field “night sky” imaging. As such, as your field narrows, the necessity of tracking will increase, and as it continues to narrow, the necessity of having accurate, reliable, stable tracking will become ever more important. With very narrow fields, the stars may enter, transit, and exit the field in mere seconds or less. With very wide fields, the stars may not appear to move at all for very lengthy periods of time, as much as 30-45 seconds. The narrower your field, the more your magnifying a given region of the sky, and the faster stars will appear to move across the field. They slide past overhead at a very slow rate, a rate kept in sidereal time. This is due to the nature of the night sky…while at times it may seem still, the stars and the nebulas and galaxies among them are constantly on the move. The narrower you go, the more difficult astrophotography becomes, requiring more and more specialized equipment. The wider you go, the easier astrophotography is, requiring less and less specialized equipment. You have your ultra wide field, wide field, and narrow or “deep” field astrophotography. The “field” is a key term in astrophotography, referring to the framed field of view. Wide angle astrophotography is the easiest way to get into the hobby, is the most forgiving form of astrophotography, and generally the most cost effective (as it can often be done “for free” by using existing gear.) For anything else, you will likely need some kind of additional equipment, and the complexity of the hobby grows as you get into narrower and narrower “fields”.
If you are already a photographer, with a DSLR or mirrorless camera with interchangable lenses, and have one or more wide angle lenses, you can probably get started with the equipment you have. If you have never done astrophotography before, are not mechanically inclined, are not mathematically inclined, or just want to take pretty pictures of the night sky, there are a number of ways you can get into the hobby very simply. So, how do you get into astrophotography? You can start very simple, or you can start out with as much complexity and varied types of equipment as you want. I’ll leave detailing how you can get into each type of photography for other articles in the future, where I can provide more detail. In this initial introductory article, I’ll introduce you to the various forms of astrophotography, from the most simple to more complex forms. Astrophotography is as varied in it’s forms as “regular” photography, or as we astrophotographers put it, terrestrialphotography. )) For such a simple question, the answer can be incredibly complex. I am often asked the question: “How can I do astrophotography!?” in enthusiastic comments to the images I share online, or when chatting with other photographers in the actual world (yes, there is such a thing as an actual world with actual, physical people.