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Astrophotography
From phone-on-tripod star trails to tracked wide-field and guided deep-sky imaging. The same core problem at every level — collect enough photons, hold the camera steady, process the result honestly.
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Featured · howto
Astrophotography with What You Have: Phone and Tripod
Modern smartphones can capture the Milky Way, meteor showers, and star trails. The whole trick is holding the camera still and knowing which manual settings actually matter.
Dmitry Shteynbuk · December 4, 2025 · 3 min read
Articles in this hub
3 publishedAstrophotography·
Stacking: How Amateurs Beat Light Pollution with Math
One 10-minute exposure and one hundred 6-second exposures are not equivalent — but they're close. Here's how image stacking multiplies your signal without multiplying the noise.
Dmitry Shteynbuk · 3 min read
/articles/stackingAstrophotography·
Tracking the Sky: Why Equatorial Mounts Exist
The sky rotates. Your camera doesn't. An equatorial mount is the geometric trick that lets a single motor cancel out that rotation for hours at a time.
Dmitry Shteynbuk · 3 min read
/articles/equatorial-mountsTerms to know
Full glossary →- Focal ratio
- Focal length divided by aperture — a telescope's 'speed'.
- Aperture
- The clear diameter of a telescope's main optical element.
- Equatorial mount
- A telescope mount aligned to Earth's rotation axis.
- Transparency
- How clear the sky is — how much light is absorbed by haze or humidity.
- Seeing
- The steadiness of the atmosphere.
- Bortle scale
- A 1–9 scale of night-sky darkness.