Start Here
What to try on the next clear night, and where to go from there.
This page is for anyone who has looked at a picture of the night sky and wondered whether an ordinary person could take one. You can, and with less equipment than you would guess. Start with the four steps below on the next clear night, then pick where you are now for a short list of what to read next.
Try this tonight, with nothing
Before you read anything or buy anything, do these four things on the next clear night. They cost nothing at all, they take about half an hour, and they will tell you more about your sky than any article can.
- See what is up before you go out Open Stellarium Web in any browser, put in your town, and it draws tonight's sky above you with the stars and planets named. It is free and there is nothing to install. It is the first thing I open before every session.
- Go outside and wait twenty minutes Your eyes need roughly twenty minutes in the dark before they work properly. Keep your phone screen off, or switch it to the dimmest red setting you have. Stars will keep appearing the whole time you wait.
- Count what you can actually see Pick one patch of sky and count the stars in it. From the middle of Dubai you might get one or two. An hour into the Dubai desert you will see hundreds. Two and a half hours into the heart of the Abu Dhabi desert, you will lose count. That difference is the single biggest factor in what you will be able to photograph. If you want to know what those counted stars mean, the Bortle scale explains it.
- Take one photo with the phone in your pocket If you have a small phone tripod, now is the time to use it. Otherwise prop the phone against a wall or a bag so it cannot move. Use night mode, or set the shutter to ten seconds, and point it up. Most modern phones will record stars you could not see with your eyes.
That is the hobby in miniature: a plan, dark skies, patience, and a camera held still. Everything below is a way of doing more of it.
Where are you right now?
Pick the one that fits and a short reading list opens underneath.
Just curious
You are not buying anything yet. Fair enough. These three will tell you whether the hobby suits you, and none of them assume you own a single piece of equipment.
Twenty odd minutes of reading and one clear evening, and you will have an answer, without going anywhere or buying anything. On the few nights a month when the Moon is not up, the phone route is what those nights are for. If it turns out you want more, is the next question.
I have a phone
A phone will get you the Milky Way arching over a horizon, and on a dark night it will get you more of it than you expect. Start here and spend nothing.
The same phone on a tripod will also catch a meteor shower, and the tonight page lists the next ones. What a phone will not get you is deep sky: faint nebulae and galaxies need longer exposures than a handset will give you. When you want those, picks up where this one stops.
I have a digital camera
A camera and one wide lens on a tripod will already get you the Milky Way. Add a way of tracking the sky and the same camera will reach nebulae and galaxies. This is the route with the most headroom and the steepest middle.
Once you are stacking your own frames, the next thing worth learning is calibration frames, which is twenty minutes of extra work per session that quietly decides how clean the final picture looks. The camera and tripod you already have are also all a meteor shower needs.
I have a smart telescope
The box handles tracking, focus and stacking on its own, so the skill is now in choosing targets, choosing nights, and finishing the image afterwards.
Shooting from a balcony? Imaging from a city balcony covers working with half the sky and half the night. When you want more aperture than 30mm can give you, is where that leads.
Buying my first setup
Smart telescopes changed what a first purchase looks like. A few years ago the entry point was a mount, a scope, a camera and a laptop. Now it can be one box. Read these before you spend anything.
If you already know you want the version with no ceiling on it, covers what that actually involves.
Buying a full rig
A mount, a telescope, a dedicated camera and something to run it all. It is the most capable setup and the least forgiving, because every part has to work with every other part. Read all three before you order anything.
Worth saying plainly: a smart telescope will produce a good image on your first night, and a rig probably will not. If you have never assembled one, is a cheaper way to find out whether you like the work.
What is up from where you are
Drop a pin where you will be observing from, and the tonight page works out when it gets properly dark, what the moon is doing, which objects are worth setting up for, and when the next meteor shower peaks.
Open the tonight pageAlready shooting? You probably want the gallery or the gear list instead. Every article lives on the articles page, newest first, or in reading order from planning the night to finishing the image.