I Captured a DYING STAR with only a Camera, Lens, & Tripod 

Visit brilliant.org/NebulaPhotos/ to get started learning STEM for free, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription.

To help keep track of the different sections of images (light, dark, flats and bias), I take a an image with a small red LED light before starting each group. It's easy to pick these out when previewing my images on camera or computer.

Just got started in Astrophotography and absolutely love your channel and your content. You’re a huge help for finding ones way around the wonderful world of Astro. Please keep doing what you do, it’s awesome! This video is gonna be a great start to my weekend. I hope you enjoy yours!

Thanks Nico! You are the best teacher I will ever have

Superb video Nico! - So much inspiration in your work my friend :-) Thank you for sharing!!

You could create individual folders for different types of images in the camera. When you finish shooting light frames, create a new folder for flats, another for darks, etc. This way, I don't need to take notes or remember where I put them. Both methods will work; it's a matter of preference. Thank you, Nico; clear skies. 🔭🌌

That was the most welcoming intro I've ever heard

OMG Nico, I think it's the first time you've mentioned this highpass trick for making structures more prominent, and contrasty. This is an amazing piece of advice. I've gone back to most of my saved TIFs and did this and results are stunning. Thank you for that!

Absolutely love this kind of video, I started astrophotography by watching these kinds of videos, it's beginner friendly-having many details, I'm so glad you are doing these videos again!

Man your videos make me regret selling my trusty Nikon D7000 couple of years ago.

Wow, that was a quick hour 👍🤩 Sadly I was lost as soon as you started duplicate layers in Photoshop 😅 But I loved watch it anyway 👌

Im a beginner in astrophotography and I love you

Thankyou for shareing your amazing skils! You inspire me to take a photo of Andromeda galaxy couple days ago, and it turn great! Clear skies! :)))

"our sun is going to die" "oh i'm so sorry for your loss!" oh wait 😅. I actually got the Helix nebula to show up in a 75s exposure on a 6D with a 35mm f/1.4 @2.8 on a tracker in AZ. didn't know it was there but once I stitched my pano together it was rising above the horizon! i was floored. so cool to see that in a landscape astro photo. going to make a SHORT vid eventually on that experience. who knows when

Thank you Nico! You are one of my motivators to keep trying and improving my astrophotography! I got into it sometime in March 2021. I used to just use a 50mm and dslr, but have been slowly increasing my learning steep, I have been trying harder targets and longer exposures with a skywatcher. But the regular dslr lenses don’t cut it for me anymore. I bought a Meade LX90 10’ in December and have been using it to just look at stars while taking astrophotography with my lenses. But I’ve been slowly but surely buying more equipment (bcuz it’s expensive a new piece like every few months) and soon enough I’ll have my X-Wedge to be able to use the Meade Telescope for astrophotography, I have enjoyed this hobby so much. But surely this video will help out the beginners as the one you did on Orion with no star tracker helped me with my first photo in March of 2021. For all the beginners don’t lose faith as this hobby needs dedication and time to perfect as many other hobbies do. Please learn from mistakes and just keep practicing. Videos that are informative like Nico makes are the best ones and help ease the learning curve that a lot of people confront once realizing that doing astrophotography is time consuming and a lengthy commitment! Well That’s all I have to Say! Hopefully everyone has Clear Skies this upcoming season! (P.S Don’t let light pollution lose your motivation, I live in one of the biggest bortle 9 metropolitan areas and it’s hard to go out about 2-3 hours just for less light pollution. Learn the easier targets before going out of your way for better skies. Practice on like the moon, Orion, Pleiades, and maybe even wide field night views to perfect your practice before going out.

I had a great chat about astrophotography with Nico yesterday, he is amazing

What a great video! Subscribed! You mentioned the lens warmer. In how cold / freezing weather (for example during the winter) it is possible still to operate with a DSLR without breaking it?

Always my inspiration!! NICO! Thank you for your teaching brother!

You are the best guider in astrophotography. Thanks for every lesson🙏 Respect from @Spacefrommylens

Nico, this is some fantastic information! You might want to add some SEO relating to "astrophotography for beginners" or something along those lines, I think beginners would find this video very helpful.

Absolutely brilliant Nico. I’ve been using Photoshop for some time now but without some of the tips and tricks included in this video. So grateful to you. Like many others, your channel was and still is; at the heart of most of what I do. Thank you so much 🤝

Great video as usual. I like the technique of copying the red luminance to emphasize it. I hope it works on my old Photoshop version CS4 . Couple questions: (1) On matching temperature of lights & darks: Last month I took 754 exposures of Sagittarius with my Canon T3i. According to exiftool, the temperature of 1st image @8:58pm was 51 C, middle image @9:21pm 38 C, last image @9:49pm 35 C. How to match temperature with this wide variation? (I do not know why the camera started hot & cooled. It was not noticeably hot when I started.) (2) On your oblong star fix: does it help to enlarge image to 200% or 400%, then after nudging, reduce back (50%/25%)?

You just saved my night! Finally someone that know how to teach.

Perfekt Video. But i think the objekt is to smal for 200mm. IT make more fun with greater objekts. For example the veil nebula is very big. So it's more fun for beginners.

This is by far the best astrophotography explanation I have ever seen. thx so much!

One of these days I'll run into you at Ninigret

Great video, and I have watched your channel to learn about astrophotography. I use a Mac with SiriL, and find it has the best post processing for stacking and background subtraction. I have not found any problems if I name the folders with beginning capitals.

Great image man 👍! Also what telephoto lens was used capturing this fantastic nebula (my favorite one)?

But wait Nico… it’s been cloudy at night for a week around here. Where you at brother? Awesome video though. Ty.

Great podcast, loved it!

"Goodevening. Our sun is going to die :)" 💀

I started doing this astrophotography thing about five months ago. Last night, after watching this video the other week, I decided to punch in M 27 just to see if I could see it. I could not see it in the camera screen like what you show in this video but I could on the computer. This is the very first time that I have seen something come up in color! It looks just like what you show in this video. Everything I have done with Andromeda and the area around the North America Nebula shows up black and white with shades of grey so this teal-green nebula was a bit exciting.

Love the videos bro. You got me into astrophotography and now I'm badly taking pictures of the night sky 😂 One question if you don't mind. I want to shoot the NA nebula but it's practically straight up in the sky and I'm having a hard timing framing (have a Canon dslr on a star adventurer and ballhead). Is it just a practice and patience thing or do I need to wait until it's lower in the sky? Thanks for any advice from anyone 🤙🏽

Excellent as always Nico . I love watching your PS tutorials. I end up doing the same things but in such a convoluted way bouncing back and forth with PI making several versions with numerous masks. I wish I knew PS as well as you - it would save me an enormous amount of time. Maybe when I finally retire I will have time to do this 'the right way". For now I will just pick up a tip here and there. Cheers Kurt

Excellent presentation again.

l enjoy and learned from your videos

Great video. At the beginning, it may have an idea to mention that you were using a Crop Factor camera and that the focal length of the 200mm lens changes. Anybody using a Full Frame camera may be disappointed in the results using the 200mm lens and wonder what happened.

Another brilliant video Nico. Great job!

Thank you for a well explained tutorial. Now I have something to go after without being to confused haha.

Nico, You have no idea how timely this video is. I’ve abandoned visual as I have no space for a visual scope but second attempt at 50mm astrophoto was a total bust…. Semi certain that is was ever so slightly out of focus but questioning that…. Looked for an email address to keep this from being long winded in public but…… Problem: 1k, 3s subs @f/ 2.2 w/ only dark calibration frames equals deeply flawed but otherwise beautiful galaxy core shot at bortle 5 Then second attempt 2k, 2s subs @2.2 of n.a. Neb @ bortle 4.5ish equals no nebulosity what so ever. It is only my second attempt and I was certainly overconfident from my first but I’m so disappointed with getting nothing. Can the stars look mostly in focus but still be just out of focus to the point of not showing any decent result for 3+ hrs of shots? Love your work, committed to learning how you do it

Another great video Nico!! Keep up the good work!

Thanks very much for this complete guide from A to Z. This video is definitely going to be my goto video when I will be doing astrophoto!

Making that table with calibration frames in it was such a good touch. I had forgotten exactly how to do these, so this helps. Screen shot saved and will be used!

Even though I watched a similar one of yours earlier, I just enjoy watching it again for a new target. Always enjoy your videos.

Thank you so much Nico - can we follow the same method from high light poluted city sky like bortell 8-9. Does taking more pictures would help ? - thanks again !! You Rock!!

Awesome job - love your content and education! I have yet to apply and follow along with your processes - but I'm eager to jump in soon!

Thanks a lot ♥

great video and thanks for creating it. but i do have one question. i understand the reason not to use JPEG but my camera will shoot both in RAW and CRAW. CRAW being about half the size. does it make a difference whether i use RAW or CRAW? thank you

this always gets me so excited, cuz ive always just seen photos of space and stars and the moon and just assumed, "i cant do that , i dont even own a telescope" but am excited to try this at my inlaws farm , theres no light at all out there so it should be perfect

Your videos have really inspired me to get into astrophotography. You are a brilliant teacher!

Even if I look at all your videos, thank you for regularly coming back on the basics for settings, etc. This is a good teaching approach (for me !)

This video helped me so much in the PS-Section! Learned many techniques! THANKS - although I will forget the most of it within seconds unfortunatly 😂

The term "planetary nebula" always bugged me. I know, I know, it's because it's round and looks like a planet or rather a gas giant. Wouldn't "remnant nebula" make more sense? I know that there is "supernova remnant nebula" which could be confused with normal "remnant nebulae". But just adding or leaving the prefix "supernova/hypernova" should clear up possible confusion. What do you guys think? Great and informative Video as always! Learned a lot again! Thank you

Great tutorial but thanks to my inexperience I ran into a few problems, which I will share in case it helps anyone. Firstly it was tough to even find the object, and I was doing the Trifid Nebula which ought to be much easier to find. Second, I couldn't even see stars on my camera screen so had to keep taking test shots to even keep the object in the frame. Thirdly, DSS could only find 28 stars even though to my eyes they were in focus, however I think either the light pollution was washing the nebula out, or the exposure was too short, or the focus was slightly off as only the brightest stars were visible and none of the nebula. In any case DSS would only stack 63 of the 400 frames I took. Finally, the stretching process in PS didn't work, probably because of the poor quality of the original image. The first adjustment seemed to work, at least everything became more visible, but then on the second one the data seemed to have all vanished and there was nothing on the histogram. So all in all not very good. I've obviously got a lot to learn ... 😂

Ok… that was a dramatic start…

Absolutely love your videos Nico! Thanks for sharing 👌

I just found your channel as I am just getting into astrophotography. Immediately subscribed as your delivery and content is spot on! Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as helping those of us that are new to this genre of photography.

Thank you so much 💓

Hey Nico great video! I have the Star Adventure 2i and use Stellarium to locate my targets as well. One thing that helps in that process is I bought a phone holder that has a cold shoe mount. Attach it to the camera or an extension bar on the side of the scope and make sure it's square on the axis. Pull up my target and manually slew until the app shows I'm on it. It almost always gets me in frame or just outside of frame.

I may try this either this fall or next spring. My roadblock mainly is all the projects that I currently have that lack completion. Another roadblock is I don't particularly want to buy a storage device capable of storing 1000 images that you call lights & 175 images you call calibration images all in RAW format while being uncertain whether I will fall down the rabbit hole. I am wondering what kind of outcome I would get if I experimented by using only 10% of the total images for each class ??? Additionally, while I am familiar with digital darkrooms such as PhotoShop I was always a film photographer and considered digital cheating so I have a bit of a learning curve to become reasonably adept with respect to using the digital photography software. I am considering

Things Trillons of miles away are impossible to spot with a camera ....same thing with a telescope

Thankyou for this epic video. I tried taking a photo of the lagoon and triphid nebula with my 400mm like you recommended, it actually didn’t turn out too bad, thanks for the advice!

Hi. Am I safe to used a fixed tripod with no star tracker with a 135mm rokinon f2 lens? Im worried about poor quality images

Just use Affinity photo. The main DEV is an astrophotographer, Astro stacking, and specific astrophotography steps are built in. Photoshop is to expensive and you are just renting it.

Nico, I have a question regarding the first Levels adjustments. I find this step crucial in my image editing, though I'm often stuck afterwards. Well, I have noticed that the way I edit Levels and RGB channels, a slight push to the right or left can make a permanent color shift, affecting everything. For example, several times my histogram looked good, all colours aligned, black looked good, but on the image itself bright objects had mostly green cast, teal, magenta, whatever. This was evident especially when boosting the image further. They didn't look real, nor did nebulae or galaxies. I tried fixing this with all kinds of Curves adjustments, finding true black/white spots, but this colour cast remained. Then after many troubleshooting, I found that the way I adjusted Levels in the beginning was the issue. If I adjusted it right (following the histogram, but also having luck), the whole image would have nice colours - nebulae, galaxies and stars would look good. But If I messed up, it would be a pain to fix and would linger throughout the whole process. I hope you could maybe explain this in more detail, how to be more precise during Levels adjustment and what to look for? Thanks a bunch!

51:00 Hey Nico, it's Kevin's Question Time! The method you used to bring out the red color, could that take the place of getting your camera astro modified, seeing as how it seems that the camera is capturing the color but it's just being drowned out by the other signals?? Or does getting the camera astro modified allow for more of this Red channel to be captured??

I did quite a few astro pictures a couple years ago. Wish I'd had this back then. I figured a lot of it by trial and error but missed a lot also. Would have saved hours playing on my computer.

OH WOW

"Dew can form on the lens in humid environments" *Laughs in Arizonan*

Love these kinds of videos, Nico! I always pick up a new technique with them.

How can you deal with those huge tif files that stacking creates. To big for my cp.

Thanks!

Lovvvvveeee these videos! Only 1 small issue with 1 very small thing you said though. Don’t ever delete files in camera! If you’re going to have an SD card corrupt that’s what’s gonna do it, and you could waste hours! Just rely on formatting the whole card to get rid of files. When I’m doing test shots I shine my phone screen into the lens for a photo before and after test shots so it’s suppppper easy to pick them out of the files with the thumbnails

👍👍

Please keep these going! I'm stuck with a dslr, tracker, and lenses for a while. Your videos are so inclusive. I hope to see more!

"Windows only" software should just be shunned.

When you say a camera and a lens, the lens you're talking about, is a small telescope.

My iPad falls off from shudder shake quite a bit. 😂

Dumbbell nebula M27 has a 7.5 magnitude brightness. You can’t see it or find it without star finder equipment. Pick Orion M42 instead for this exercise.

I like your videos Nico. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I have one thing that bothers me a bit. If you take a Dslr camera and you have to take 500 shots of a deepsky object that would mean your camera theoreticaly will be worn out after 300 photos.. 300 x 500 makes 150.000 which is the shuttercount manufacturers give a Dslr. I also know some cameras will go beyond that number before breaking down. Do you have any experience you can share about this? How long do your cameras last? Thank you .

i got the same problem living in rhode island i want to get into this but not travel to far. any suggestions?

Ah dang, seems like my 900+ shots of the pelican are severely gimped by me not taking calibration frames apart from the darks, the first stretch you do is basiacally turning everything gray for me and I took those shots when the pelican was like 80 degrees up, so even with Bortle 5 sky I should have something there. I also went with a bit too low of an ISO setting I think (1600 on a stock 70D), I had to do some insane processing in PS to get anything usable out of the data. I know Photoshop very well and I just had to really hone in on the data to see anything. Still, for the very first time actually using a proper camera in my life and using it to do astrophotography, I can see a bit of the Milky Way in my stacked shots, which is probably ok. Kinda bummed a bit with the results, Cygnus seemed like an easy target with ~150mm on the basic 75-300mm Canon lens. Using the Sony RX100 mk4 for a wider shot actually netted me a bit better results (with some extreme vignetting to be fair) with even less shots, but I guess the lens on the Sony is 1.8 and I think I shot on the Canon with f4.6 or maybe f5.0 or something similar.

omg there is a continuous drive mode? fml. But ty

I love these DSLR and a tripod videos and it's making want to try this as well. One question, if you don't mind. I don't have the time to shoot that long at night, but I could do shorter sessions over several days for the lights. How would you handle the calibration frames? I.e. Take some with each session, or only at the end of one of the sessions.

I noticed you cover the lense for bias frames. When I'm using my telescope I don't cover it for bias frames. Have I been doing this wrong all this time?

Click on mask and use ctrl+I to invert the mask from white to black or black to white. Instead of filling with black or white.

Nebula´s are not dying stars

Very false on this video you don't mention stacking until people viewed this for a few minutes.

Omg looks great, but got lost with masks. Is it possible to save the transcript? I started writing it up but still got lost. Great tutorial, problem is, is there a nebula that Southern Hemisphere can view?

2 Questions: 1. Wouldn’t it be clever to go to LR first, apply Lens corrections and some WB tweaking - and sync ALL files, export them as Tiffs before DSS? 2. How can you work on 32Bit default DSSexport Tifs in PS? I need to use 16Bit export

This video is gold! When I saw it was an hour long I hesitated at first, but the way you go step by step with no fluff or unnecessary dialogue makes it so easy to follow along. And the hour actually flew by, thanks!

Actually a great workflow. Tried it last night on M-81/82 last night. Can detect the barred spiral of M-81 and the "breaks" in M-82 are very pronounced! LOL got carried away. Ended up with 950 subs. Set DSS to 20% ended up stacking 750 subs!! Took the computer all night to stack!!

Have you tried multiple exposure over more than one night to further increase total exposure time? If so did it make any difference?

Thanks!

@Nebula Photos A faster way to a black mask is to create it when making the mask. Just clicking on mask icon makes a white mask. ADDING the ALT key while clicking on mask icon makes a black mask.

Our sun is gonna die. I heard son lol.

Is a D-frame camera pretty much required for this (mine is F-frame) ?

I use folders in the camera to separate my lights, darks, flat and bias frames. Much easier for me to find in processing rather than trying to remember or write down frame numbers. I love your videos. You are so good with the details.

I’m a broke highschool student I love astrophotography but I don’t have a tracker could you do more videos without a star tracker please.

Whats the lens name?