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Practical tips

Weigand's technical tips

From autoguiding to processing videos: with Weigand's technical tips, you can master the step towards becoming an advanced astrophotographer.

Getting started with astrophotography is really not so complicated. But your first successes will increase your expectations of your own images, and you will quickly face more complex questions. How can you create a uniformly-illuminated, error-free astronomy photo? How do I best prepare my image data for processing? How can the maximum amount of data be extracted from the sensor? This advanced workshop goes into the details and shows the interaction of hardware and software in practice - for perfect astrophotography results.

How does autoguiding work?

Getting started with PHD Guiding

Push Here, Dummy: your first steps in handling autoguiding software using the PHD Guiding program as an example.

How to successfully create photos of Mars

Beating refraction and seeing

How to succeed at creating pictures of low-lying planets, despite atmospheric refraction and turbulent air.

Two filters combined for Hα solar observation

What is the benefit of filter stacking?

More contrast for Hα solar observation and photography through the combination of two filters.

The perfect flat field

The road to error-free astronomy photos

With correcting or flat field frames, you can combat errors caused by dust or uneven illumination.

Pre-processing with the PIPP program

Optimising image data for stacking

Pre-processing of solar, lunar, and planetary images with the PIPP (Planetary Imaging Pre-processor) program.

Examples of pixel binning technique and applications

Combining many pixels

CCD sensors can be read in different ways to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

You don't always need to use tracking!

Astrophotography on the go

Impressive images of the Milky Way can be created without large amounts of equipment. Software is useful here!

How to save images using sigma stacking

No more satellite trails!

Aeroplanes and satellites are a nuisance for the astrophotographer. But do you really need to completely discard the images?

The flash spectrum of the chromosphere

Spectroscopy during a solar eclipse

A total solar eclipse offers the opportunity to capture an emission spectrum of the chromosphere.

The corona in all its splendour

HDR composite of a solar eclipse

A total solar eclipse is visually much more impressive than a mere photo from a digital camera. How can you improve on that?

The aperture ratio and deep sky astrophotography

Using reducers

A reducer can help by adapting the focal length to suit the object size or the atmospheric conditions.

Sharp images of the Moon with a DSLR

Tips for an optimised workflow

The Moon is the ideal object for anyone getting started in astrophotography. Stacking and sharpening make details visible.

Using Astrometrica to determine the position of minor planets

Getting started measuring astronomical objects

Emulate astronomy professionals and try to determine the position and brightness of objects.

Using lucky imaging to create detailed pictures of the Moon & more

Processing videos with AutoStakkert!3

How do you take the best pictures of the Moon? Take a lot of images and select the sharpest! AutoStakkert! helps with this.

De-rotating planetary videos

Please rewind!

Planetary images need a lot of pictures, unfortunately their rotation limits the length of the videos. But there is a way of countering this.

Capturing shooting stars

Meteor imaging technique

There are many meteor showers over the course of the year. What is the best way to capture these brief luminous phenomena?

When the drizzle technique can bring you better resolution

Drizzling for higher resolution images

Hubble also experiences this problem: how does undersampling arise and which software helps to solve the problem?

Step-by-step guide to creating high-resolution Moon mosaics

Your own poster of the Moon

How to create your own high-resolution portrait of our satellite, suitable for a large-format poster.