About Tracking the Stars
My interest in astronomy dates back to my teenage years when I photographed the night sky using a 35mm film camera that I modified to keep the release open manually.
I returned to the hobby more recently with the purchase of a Nikon D750 and the Star Adventurer GTi star tracker.
Most of my images are taken in rural Wisconsin at a class 4 (Bortle scale) site.
Equipment
The equipment that I am using is constanly evolving.
The camera is an unmodified Nikon D750 with a Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G telephoto lens on an Oben CT-3565 Carbon Fiber tripod.
More recently, I am employing the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi star tracker connected to iPhone 13 to take longer exposures.
Post-Processing
I am using Siril for post-processing most of my images.
I generally apply the following steps:
- Stack images using bias, dark and flat files
- Crop
- Background extraction
- Photometric color calibration
- Stretch star-less image using asign and/or histogram transformation
- Detail-adjustments in Photoshop
- Color saturation