Let’s Try This Again
Armed with a DSLR and a kit lens, I set out to capture more of the night sky. This time, I was ready. This time, I was determined to see what’s out there. With the camera fitted with a real lens—not just shakily attached to a telescope—I felt more confident. I knew holding the camera wouldn’t work for long exposures, so I mounted it on a repurposed tripod I had lying around. I even had an intervalometer on hand, ready to snap photos without adding vibrations from my hands.
It worked! I did it. I was able to capture more stars this time and even started to get some “deeper” images. I wasn’t expecting distant galaxies or nebulae just yet; I wanted to improve on what I had done before. Now, instead of a few smudges, I was capturing hundreds of smaller smudges. I still aimed blindly into the night, without a specific target in mind. Even if I had known what I was aiming for, I was just beginning to understand potential targets—and many were either no longer in my night sky or hidden below the tree line in my backyard.
With each day of research, I learned more about the tools that people in this hobby and profession rely on. Proper mounts, star trackers, DeepSkyStacker (DSS), and GIMP were now on my radar. Getting familiar with these tools and refining my process eventually led to even more stable images.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Focusing with the Canon was trickier than I anticipated. The model I was using didn’t seem to have a zoom feature (at least none that I could find). I knew the basic idea: get the stars to appear as small as possible. Since the stars are point sources at an “infinite” distance, they should appear as tiny dots on the screen. At times, I thought I had achieved focus, but a small tap or nudge to the lens would cause the stars to go out of focus. I later learned that some people use electrical tape to secure the focus ring once they achieve sharpness. This trick worked wonders.
Next, I needed to figure out how to take multiple photos and start stacking them. I found several tutorials that walked me through using a free program called DeepSkyStacker (DSS). I started by taking lots of short-exposure images and importing them into DSS to get the hang of the steps. This was a huge step forward. Finally, I was able to stack multiple images into one, more detailed shot. Though I still had a lot to learn about post-processing, I was gaining confidence.
Soon, I would be ready to take this a step further—by using a star tracker and taking even longer exposures to collect even more data. Once collected, bring my stacked photo into GIMP where I could tinker with the art of processing.
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