A huge thanks must go out to Craige Watson from the Tamworth Regional Astronomy Club for giving up his time to conduct the Astro training evening on the 25th June. 15 club members attended and spent nearly 2 hours being tutored by Craige and taking photos.
Craige has sent to the club a summary of setting to use as a base line to explore and adjust for great astro shots.
Tripod, cable release or a timer release, manual mode on your DSLR or Mirroless camera, use your widest angle lens eg 14mm, 24mm or 50mm, sutter speed 15 – 20 seconds, aperture set to the widest possible eg f2.8 or 3.5 or 4 etc and ISO 1600 – 6400.
Focus on an object such as the moon, distant light or bright star and switch camera lens to manual focus.
Apps for your phone to assist with times for astro events. Planetarium software for your Android phone or Sky Safari, Stellarium for IOS. some apps may cost. PhotoPills is another app but does cost to purchase.
Software to process your images. DeepSky Stacker (free), Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Lumiar, GIMP.
A great resource: Alan Dyer – AmazingSky.com
