If you are interested in capturing photos of the night sky, our Astrophotography tips and gear recommendations will guide you on your way to capturing your very first image of the stars, the Milky Way, planets, and even deep-sky galaxies,nebulae, and star clusters.
Astrophotography can seem daunting to a beginner, but the good news is that it's now easier than ever. Even the most talented astrophotographers today had to start somewhere!
Some newcomers with a technical background can pick up the hobby faster than others, but if that’s not you, don’t be discouraged. Our library of free astronomy resources, which we call OPT University, was created to help you with every step of the way. If you need extra help in any step at all, contact our friendly team to talk to an expert.
One of the first questions people ask is: "What gear do I need to get started in astrophotography?" At the most basic level, you need:
Our team also put togetherthis awesome video going over each part of what makes an astro rig. This may seem like a lot at first look, but follow along as we go over each one and provide tutorials for each part.
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The mount is the most important part of any astrophotography setup. That's right — the mount — not the lens/telescope or camera! Why is that? The mount determines how long your camera and lens/telescope can track the night sky for. That directly affects how long your exposures can be without star trails, and this has the largest impact on your astrophotography images.
Star Trackers
For most beginner astrophotographers, we recommend a star tracker. What is a star tracker? Star trackers are miniature and more portable equatorial (EQ) mounts. As the Earth rotates, the stars appear to move across the night sky. Both star trackers and equatorial mounts can counter this motion so that your camera and lens/telescope stay pointed at celestial objects. This allows you to take long exposures of the Milky Way and other deep sky objects without star trails — something that a tripod alone cannot do. Star trackers like the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro are perfect for beginners, thanks to their affordability, portability, and ease of use. Star trackers are best used with a DSLR and camera lens, but can support most telephoto lenses and even some small telescopes.
Equatorial Mounts
Equatorial (EQ) mounts are the bigger brother to star trackers and most popular for deep sky imaging. Behind almost every amazing photo of a galaxy or nebula you've seen is an equatorial mount. When paired with a quality telescope and camera, you too can use an EQ mount to capture incredible photos of space. With a setup like this, you could even have your image featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), as our affiliates often do! There are a ton of EQ mounts out there, but some of the most popular and beginner friendly are the Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro and the Celestron Advanced VX.
Other Astrophotography Mounts
If you are interested in other types of astrophotography like moon photography or planetary imaging, you can use an altitude-azimuth mount (alt-az for short) instead. Alt-az mounts feature a simple up-down, left-right operation. These mounts are perfect for visual observing and short exposure imaging like lunar and planetary but aren't ideal for deep sky imaging. Some mounts that can work in both equatorial and alt-az modes for the best of both worlds, known as hybrid mounts.
Before choosing the type of telescope to start your journey with, narrow your options down by the type of astrophotography you want to do first.
Telescopes for Deep Sky Astrophotography
There are a wide variety of telescopes you can use for deep sky astrophotography. For true beginners, we almost always recommend starting with a small refractor such as the Radian Raptor 61, the William Optics RedCat 51, or the William Optics ZenithStar 61. These wide field of view scopes are perfect for beginners thanks to their forgiving short focal length and maintenance-free use. Refractors, especially apochromatic triplet and quadruplet (Petzval) refractors, are so good for deep sky astrophotography that many imagers never need another type of telescope. Refractors can get very expensive for larger sizes, though, which is why some astrophotographers go with other designs. Other popular deep sky astrophotography telescopes include Newtonians, Ritchey-Chrétiens, RASAs, and more, but we don't recommend these for beginners as they all have steep learning curves.
Telescopes for Planetary Imaging
For planetary imaging, you need a telescope with an extremely long focal length to capture details on the surfaces of planets. By far the most popular telescope for planetary imaging is the Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope, or the SCT. You're best off using a planetary camera and a Barlow lens to image the planets and the moon. This is quite different than the gear used for deep sky imaging. The good news, though, is that you can still use an SCT for deep sky imaging with the help of a focal reducer. A focal reducer on an SCT will cut your required exposure times in half.
Astrophotography Without a Telescope
For widefield and Milky Way imaging, consider not even using a telescope at all, but a camera lens instead! The Milky Way is one of the best targets for beginners since it's so large. You can capture it with just your camera and lens on a tripod or a star tracker. When shopping for a camera lens for astrophotography, you ideally want something that's wide angle (ideally 35mm focal length or less) and has a fast (low f-number) aperture, like f/2.8 or below. A lens like this is by no means required, but will certainly help you get better Milky Way photos.
Smart Telescopes
Smart telescopes are a new category of telescopes that have been developed within the last few years. These telescopes take advantage of your smartphone to automate the setup process, like automatically aligning the telescope to the night sky. Some advanced smart telescopes like the Vaonis Stellina and Unistellar eVscope can even align with the night sky, take pictures, and process the images all on their own!
DSLRs, astronomy dedicated cameras, and even smartphones these days can capture impressive astrophotography images. By figuring out which kind of astrophotography you'd like to do first, it will help you pick the right camera.
Cameras for Deep Sky Astrophotography
DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, like the kind you might have at home, can be a great springboard for diving into deep sky astrophotography. But most astrophotographers eventually upgrade to a dedicated astronomy camera because they have something DSLRs don’t: cooling. Cooling prevents the sensor from heating up during long exposures, which greatly helps keep your final image clean and free of noise. Cooled, dedicated astronomy cameras have become very affordable in recent years, and you too can take advantage of this technology!
Cameras for Planetary Imaging
With a smartphone adapter, you can easily use your smartphone’s camera to take pictures of solar system objects like the moon and planets through your telescope’s eyepiece. If you want even better planetary images, consider upgrading to a planetary camera. These cameras feature high frame rates that cut through the shakiness of Earth’s atmosphere, giving you sharp images of the moon and planets.
Other Cameras for Astrophotography
Cameras have many uses beyond just taking pictures in astrophotography. Some cameras can help you get better pictures by using them to make your mount more accurate. One popular type of camera for this purpose is called a guide camera. In a nutshell, a guide camera is a small camera separate from your main camera that watches a specific star and then tells your mount to correct itself if that star begins to drift. Another type of camera is known as a polar alignment camera. This type of camera can streamline the polar alignment process, which is a critical step for any astrophotographer.
Accessories can bring your images to the next level or simply make your setup more convenient. Whether it be a light pollution filter, an autoguiding system, a telescope control unit, or an electronic focuser for your telescope, accessories streamline your astrophotography rig to make it easier to capture amazing photos of space.
Filters for Deep Sky Astrophotography
Perhaps the easiest and best bang-for-your-buck upgrade for any astrophotography rig is adding a light pollution filter. Filter technology has gotten so good these days that some filters can cut right through the skyglow from bright cities and still produce an incredible photo of outer space. When using a color camera, a light pollution filter like the Optolong L-Pro (for galaxies) or the Optolong L-eXtreme (for nebulae) will be best. When using a monochrome camera, narrowband filters are what you need.
Telescope Control Units
Imagine if you could be inside the comfort of your home or vehicle and wirelessly view the images your telescope takes from your smartphone or computer. With a telescope control unit, you can do just that. These mini computers can control your camera, mount, focuser, autoguiding, dew heaters, and even provide power to your astrophotography rig.
Autoguiding Accessories
Autoguiding can increase your star-trail-free exposures by as much as 5x compared to without it. To begin guiding, you'll need a guide scope, a guide camera, and a way to attach it to your telescope. If you're more advanced or using a long focal length telescope, an off-axis guider might be a better choice for you.
Electronic Focusers
Getting focus perfect by hand can be difficult, and on top of that, temperature changes throughout the night can throw focus off slightly. This can cause your images to be just barely out of focus. Electronic Focusers can nail the best point of focus every single time and then keep it dialed in during the night as temperature changes.
Other Accessories for Astrophotography
There is a myriad of accessories for astrophotography — so many that we can't list them all here! Some other popular choices are camera t-rings, focal reducers and correctors, collimation tools, power supplies, filter wheels and drawers, and much more. The good news is that we carry tens of thousands of products at OPT, so we always have what you need. And if for whatever reason we don't, we can always add it at your request.
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If you need extra help in any step at all in understanding how to make your jump into Astrophotography, contact our friendly team to talk to an expert!
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