10 Deep Sky Astrophotographers to follow

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I have been doing astrophotography for a couple of years now. Along the way, I have learnt a lot through the process. The complexity and challenges associated with planning, tracking, guiding, capturing and processing an image make it a very enjoyable and rewarding hobby. It deprives me of some sleep but is fully worth it.

Astrophotography is the beautiful blend of science and art. You need have good understanding of space and science, yet you need that creative side of you bring out your best images and renders. The details of what you see in space could be very subjective and there are a million ways to render the same deep sky object, which makes this hobby very unique and rewarding at the same time.

Along the way, I have come across some really awesome people who have not only perfected their craft, but are more than happy to document and publish their mistakes which really helps everyone trying to learn. Some of them are even open to help individually. While deep sky astrophotography has been rewarding in itself, I have built a community of really awesome people who share their work and encourage others to learn.

If you are considering getting into astrophotography, or even simply interested in the art from some very talented folks, here is my list of recommendations. Of course, I follow a lot more people, but here are my top 10.

 

10. Astrocapetown

Some incredible images from dark skies in South Africa. I am a recent follower of this account, but have been hooked with all the amazing images on the channel.

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The Optolong L-eNhanse duo narrowband filter is a great choice for this target, especially if you don’t want to do the run around of using separate Ha and OIII filters. This image of Thor’s Helmet (NGC 2359) was captured last week using the RASA 8. ⁣ ⁣ Acquisition Details ⁣ ⁣ Lights – 180 X 90 sec at unity gain⁣ Darks – 50 ⁣ Bias – 50⁣ Flats – 50 ⁣ Flat darks – 50⁣ ⁣ Equipment ⁣ ⁣ Telescope – @celestronuniverse RASA 8⁣ Camera – @zwoasi ASI 1600MC Cool Filter – @optolongfilter L-eNhanse⁣ Focuser – Celestron focuser ⁣ Guidescope – @primalucelab 60mm guidescope⁣ Guide camera – @zwoasi ASI120MM⁣ Controller – @primalucelab Eagle 3 Pro⁣ ⁣ Main processing steps in Pixinsight ⁣ ⁣ 1. Calibration, registration and stacking ⁣ 2. Dynamic background extraction ⁣ 3. Histogram stretch⁣ 4. Morphological transformation⁣ 5. Curves ⁣ ⁣ #astrophotography #astropics #astrobin #astrocapetown #astrobackyard #astronomy #space #spacepics #apotd #photography #naturephotography #capetown #zwooptical #primalucelab #newlands #southafrica #nebulae #telescope #spaceart #astro #universe #followme #instadaily #instaphoto #milkywaychasers #milkyway #ig_astrophotography #photographerfocus #southafricaza #celestronrocks

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9. Cosmic Background

While I equally enjoy his solar, lunar and planetary images, I particularly love his deep sky content.

8. Ray’s Astrophotography

I have been one of the early subscribers of Ray’s channel and while his images have all been stellar, I have seen the channel grow with quality content that really helps you learn. Some amazing content both on his instagram and youtube channel.

7. Ian Barredo

One of the accounts I have been following since the beginning. Like this unreal rendering of the Rosette Nebula, Ian has some breathtaking images in his gallery.

6. Chucks Astrophotography

Chuck has some very cool tutorials on his youtube channel and consistently produces some amazing deep sky images. Chuck has produced some stunning images that have made it to NASA’s APOD a few times!

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This is the Crescent Nebula and much more faint Soap Bubble Nebula below it. The Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5,000 light-years away from Earth. The Soap Bubble Nebula is a planetary nebula. I captured this with narrowband filters Ha and OIII and 11.3 hours of exposure time. ____________ Here are my setup details: Imaging Telescope: Celestron RASA 8-inch Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro Polar Alignment: QHYCCD PoleMaster Frames: Baader Ha: 210×120" (gain: 75, offset: 15) Baader OIII: 258×60" (gain: 75, offset: 15) Integration: 11.3 hours Guide Scope: ZWO 60mm Guide Scope Guide Camera: ZWO ASI224MC #soapbubble #astronomy #astrophotography #cosmos #dark #deepsky #longexposure #milkyway #nasa #natgeo #naturephotography #nebula #nightphotography #nightshooters #nightsky #outerspace #physics #planet #science #space #stars #stargazing #telescope #universe #universetoday

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5. CurtisMorgan

While he does a lot of film making and other cool stuff, his deep sky images are insanely cool. His lunar images as well as his deep space images are beautiful. He has some incredible animations as well which are mind blowing.

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M101 sitting 21 million light years off in the distance. Slightly smaller then our galaxy with a diameter of 170,000 LY but holding over a trillion stars (If you want your head and or calculator to melt, multiply either of those numbers by 6 trillion and you can get an idea of the mileage). With an average of one to two exo planets per star you could go ahead and assume, in this one galaxy alone, there are 1.5 trillion planets. None of which we will ever see in this life but you can imagine what’s out there. This galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions floating amidst material we have yet to understand. We are small but we are all we truly know. Forged from explosions in the sky. Crafted by a force vastly more powerful than us. Connected through love, hope, creativity and a collective, integrated desire to know where we came from. Even the most chaotic of us strives for peace 🙋🏽‍♂️We are innately control freaks but when we lose control of our intended outcome, we tend to panic. When really, we weren’t in much control to begin with. When we look at what’s right in front of us in this current season of our lives it is so easy to be fearful but when you zoom out and look the bigger picture, the fear almost strangely fades away. We were not born with fear, we acquired it over time. It may be the time to trade your fear for faith in your future. A ‘level up’ chapter if you will. I captured this 60 image / 10 hour exposure over the past week while the moon was hiding from us. Enjoy and keep your eyes high in the sky. Big things await you just beyond this mountain.

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4. Astrofalls

Truly one of the best astrophotography accounts out there. Each image is meticulously crafted with hours of exposure capturing every minute detail. I have seen few astrophotographers generate more details than Bray Falls.

3. Galactic Hunter

I really like the content on this channel. Antoine and Dalia image through dark skies in the desert which makes for some stunning visuals.

One of the very cool things with this channel is their quest to image all 110 objects in the Messier catalog and they are well on their way to hit that target soon.

 

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Unguided image 2/3 😢 One hour on the Crab Nebula (M1). We already had captured the crab 3 years ago with our old DSLR camera, also doing one hour of exposure, so we wanted to give it a go in narrowband with our ASI 1600MM-Pro camera, and we loved it! Sadly this was taken last week when our guiding camera was on strike and refused to work. Check out our full post on our website to see the difference between the DSLR and CMOS images! Visit galactic-hunter.com for a complete catalog of our astrophotography as well as videos of our adventures in the Nevada Desert. #astronomy #astrophotography #ngc884 #lasvegas #nevada #photography #ngc869 #orion #nightphotography #space #stars #longexposure #desert #canon #asi1600 #7dmii #astro_photography_ #sky #science #crabnebula #night #m1 #cluster @OPTcorp #messier1 #pixinsight #night_shooterz #APOD #OPTeam @zwoasi @photographingspace @universetoday @astro_photography_ @oriontelescopes

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2. Dylan O’Donnell

Dylan has some amazing youtube content on planning, imaging and processing content with a dash of humor. I particularly love his ISS pass video, but his images are stunning as well.

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This image is a little unexpected. I had a small window this evening before the moon rose after 8pm and started shooting around 6:30pm with the “wrong” telescope and the QHY-247C colour camera. I knew it would be super wide and not very detailed with this focal length, but shot it anyway. After drizzle, stack and a severe crop it’s still pretty wide but I can also see a lot of the background clouds in the area that I’ve never seen in other shots of this weird galaxy (Centaurus A) before. Plenty of small galaxies pepper the field as well as undulating light and dark patches which I’d normally be tempted to darken away but it looks quite interesting I think! I assume the dark patch is real because it’s not in my last image with the same unchanged setup, but can’t find another reference image stretched this way. Anyway, just a little surprised to get an image of decent quality so quickly. 75 minutes of total integration in 60 second exposures with the Celestron RASA 11″ #nofilter. #astrophotography #celestronrocks #qhyccd #qhy #truecolour #centaurusa #galaxy #starstuff

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1. Astrobackyard

At this point, anyone that is into Astrophotography knows Trevor Jones and his Astrobackyard channel. A big reason could be that Trevor inspired them to take up the hobby.

Trevor not only produces once in a lifetime images of deep sky objects from his backyard, but creates detailed youtube content that really help you learn the nitty gritty aspects of the craft.

Even if you want nothing to do with astrophotography, I will still recommend his channel. You can see some incredible work with deep sky imaging and the science and meticulous planning behind each image.

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The Horsehead Nebula This image was captured using a Canon 60Da 📷 and William Optics Zenithstar 73 refractor. My latest effort includes just 2 hours of total exposure time using the Radian Telescopes Triad Ultra filter. This was the project happening on rig 2 in my latest video (link in bio). I replaced 10 "moonlit frames" with 10 new 5-minute subs captured Sunday. 24 x 5-minutes @ ISO 1600 15 Darks Canon EOS 60Da William Optics Zenithstar 73 Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro William Optics 50mm Guide Scope Altair GPCAM 2 Mono Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox (Dew Heater) Astro Photography Tool PHD2 Guiding DeepSkyStacker Photoshop 2020 #astrophotography #nebula #space #astro #stars #nightsky #stargazing #astronomy #telescope #canon #canon60da #horseheadnebula #deepsky #deepspace #backyardastrophotography #nature #outdoors #beautyinnature #AstroBackyard @optcorp @williamoptics @skywatcherusa

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Lastly of course, if you want to see where I am with my journey with astrophotography, you can checkout my instagram channel, BackyardStarman. I feel my images have come a long way, but clearly going by the above, I have a really long way to go! 🙂

Clear Skies! 🙂

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