Is Astrophotography Without Tracking Possible? (2022)

[hengheng]

Nowadays, most people who say astrophotography don't mean Deep Sky photography, hunting planets, nebula and galaxies. It's mostly the sky over a wide-angle landscape. "Astrophotography" happens at < 20mm.

Totally viable untracked. The classic 14mm prime has gone from f2.8 to f1.8 to f1.4, and sensors have become really good at high sensitivity for a 15 second exposure. Quite often, that's enough.

The hairy part is when it's not quite enough, and exposures have to be stacked. I have a crop sensor camera (canon 1.6x, so 40% area) with an f/2 lens that I like to step down further, and a good Starscape this way will take 10-40 exposures. I can stack those no problem, but it's trees on the horizon that are problematic. The ground stack and the sky stack have to clash, and a complex shaped border will always look photoshopped, because it is.

Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to a) pictures being available online, meaning that you've already seen the better version of the same photo, and b) the images being sterile and without context, with no relation to the photographer's story. Milky Way in a national park says "I've been there!" in a way that a shot of the Whirlpool Galaxy just can't.

[dylan604]

Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to C) too many ruined images from man made objects floating through the shot, D) a helluva lot more equipment required than just a camera and a lens

I love the wide angle astro stuff, but I'm more into timelapse. But I do love "trying" shooting DSO as well, but tracking is obviously required.

[jebarker]

> Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to a) pictures being available online, meaning that you've already seen the better version of the same photo

I find deep sky astrophotography compelling because there's still a huge difference between _my_ image of a galaxy and the many "better" ones already available. The difference is that I went through the experience of taking it so it feels more like it's really there. It's the closest I can get to actually experiencing seeing the galaxy with my naked eyes. The ideal would be visual astronomy of DSOs but that'll never be possible.

[pppone]

Yes, and it is already happening in professional astronomy. For example, the "Antarctic Tianmu Plan" [0] have shown that you can successfully capture non-trailed images without using tracking mounts by using drift-scanning CCDs—basically letting the sky move across your sensor while the detector is read out at the same rate.

[0] - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019468

[madaxe_again]

You can, but dark noise is a problem with this technique as your SNR per bucket ends up being low. The purpose of long exposures with tracking is to maximise your SNR.

Also, it helps significantly to be in Antarctica, where the relative movement is much slower than it is at lower latitudes — and to have multiple telescopes - and low noise CCDs, in a cold, dry environment.

Sadly, most of us don’t have those luxuries.

[astroimagery]

I also don't agree that deep sky astro is losing its appeal and that is indeed what I am interested in. I think that each astrophotgrapher has his own style which is totally unique and if you check some of my image then you'll see what I mean. https://astroimagery.com/astrophotography-deep-sky-images/

[jameslk]

Isn't trackerless astrophotography one of the main use cases for software that can do stacking like Siril [0] and similar tools [1] out there?

0. https://siril.org/

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAstrophotography/comments/1b7fz3...

[bhouston]

Siril is for integrating a lot of images together that are tracked and then removing the background. While you may be able to use it untracked it is primarily for tracked images.

[polishdude20]

Yes those software do align the images based on the stars so it can compensate for movement.

[incomingpain]

Tracking is needed for when you want to do say 15 second exposures.

The new technique for astrophotography isnt long exposures. Its about fast exposures in an attempt to maximize good atmospheric wobble.

[astroimagery]

That's called lucky imaging, yes. It's not particcularly new btw. Also, for capturing very faint deep sky objects like galaxies and nebulae you need long exposures of several minutes to get the deeper detail.

[shmerl]

What about using a reflector telescope like a Dobsonian? Would it be able to capture more light lowering the requirement for exposure time?

[dreamcompiler]

The conventional wisdom is "Dobbies are not designed for photography" but that assumes tracking is necessary for photography. I'd expect that for untracked photography a Dobbie would work fine provided you could lock it down in alt/az and the whole assembly was robust enough not to vibrate for a few seconds. That might be a tall order.