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Photography

Astrophotography

Photograph the Night Sky, From Planning to Stacked Image

12 lessons4 modules9h 45m durationbeginner level

Instructor: StretchLearn Faculty

About this course

Astrophotography is part planning, part field technique, and part data processing, and a beginner who skips any of the three ends up with noisy, blurred, or unframed results. This course walks through the full chain: reading the moon phase and forecasts to pick a clear, dark night, using the 500 and NPF rules to expose the Milky Way without trailing, capturing and blending star trails, understanding what a tracking mount and a small telescope actually do, and calibrating and stacking deep-sky frames in free software. You finish able to plan a shoot, capture clean data in the field, and turn dozens of frames into a sharp, low-noise photograph of the night sky.

Curriculum

Module 1: Planning the Shoot: Sky, Site, and Gear3 lessons
Module 2: Wide-Field Capture: Milky Way and Star Trails3 lessons
  • Focusing and Exposing the Stars: The NPF and 500 Rules🔒50m
  • Composing the Milky Way Over a Landscape🔒45m
  • Star Trails: Capturing the Sky in Motion🔒50m
Module 3: Going Deeper: Tracking Mounts and Telescopes3 lessons
  • Why Tracking Changes Everything: Star Trackers🔒50m
  • Telescope Basics: Focal Length, Aperture, and Mounts🔒50m
  • Connecting the Camera and Shooting Through a Telescope🔒45m
Module 4: Processing: Stacking and Finishing the Image3 lessons
  • Why We Stack: Signal, Noise, and Calibration Frames🔒50m
  • Stacking in DeepSkyStacker, Step by Step🔒55m
  • The Stretch: Bringing the Image to Life🔒55m
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