All articles tagged with #astrophotography
The Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards celebrate 25 awe-inspiring dark-sky images captured in remote locations worldwide, highlighting photographers’ patience and planning as they document the Milky Way’s arch above deserts, waterfalls, coasts, and mountains.
Vaonis has unveiled two new smart telescopes, the Vespera III and Vespera Pro 2, featuring sharper optics and upgraded sensors to improve color contrast, reduce chromatic aberration, and deliver edge-to-edge sharpness for astrophotography. The Vespera III uses a Sony IMX585 8.5MP sensor with a 50 mm aperture and offers up to 11 hours of battery and 115 GB of internal storage; the Pro 2 packs a higher‑resolution Sony IMX676 12.5MP sensor with 225 GB storage. Both models share a 245 mm focal length, include a tall aluminum tripod, add a humidity sensor with an anti‑fog system, and upgrade to USB‑C for faster file transfers. They are priced at $2,490 and $2,990 and are available now from BH Photo & Video and other retailers, continuing Vaonis’ push toward automated alignment, tracking and smartphone-based imaging for enthusiasts and beginners.
Astrophotographer Ronald Brecher captured a striking image of Markarian's Chain—an extended string of galaxies in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster—from his home in Guelph, Canada, using a Skywatcher Esprit 120 and multiple filters to accumulate about 9.5 hours of exposure. The shot highlights the galaxy pair NGC 4438/NGC 4435, nicknamed 'The Eyes', with nearby ellipticals M86 and M84 also visible; Markarian's Chain is a dense segment of the roughly 2,000-member Virgo Cluster. Brecher captured the image between April 17 and 27, and the article explains how to spot Markarian's Chain in spring skies: find Leo's Denebola and Virgo's Vindemiatrix and sweep a 6-inch telescope to the patch between them.
A Guardian gallery showcases a global roster of Milky Way photographs for 2026, featuring remote locations from New Zealand to Argentina and Spain. Photographers describe demanding shoots and sophisticated techniques—long exposures, focus stacking, and post-processing—to reveal the galaxy with extraordinary clarity, amid challenging terrain, harsh weather, and strict light-pollution limits, underscoring the value of dark-sky conservation.
Astrophotographer Josh Dury captured a composite image of Lyrid meteors streaking across the Milky Way above Scotland's Isle of Skye, using a star tracker, a Sony A7S III and a wide-angle lens to stack about 30 seconds of exposures into a single shot that also shows the Milky Way’s core, the Three Brothers of Skye waterfalls, and bright stars like Vega, Deneb and Altair; he described the moment as magical and blended terrestrial and cosmic details in post-processing.
Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman joined forces with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy to photograph the Moon’s far side, using Wiseman’s onboard camera bursts and McCarthy’s stacking technique to pull out mineral colors and surface details that a single shot can’t capture. The resulting images reveal color differences—blue-tinted titanium-rich basalts and other minerals—by reducing noise through stacked exposures, effectively giving the Moon “cyborg eyes.” McCarthy plans more edits from the mission’s data, building on NASA’s trove of Artemis 2 imagery.
Photographer Angel Fux braved −28°C on Dent d’Hérens near the Matterhorn to capture a rare triple Milky Way arch—winter arc, summer arc, and Gegenschein—using a helicopter lift and a 40-hour workflow of 260 FITS exposures to create a new panoramic image of the Alps.
Capture the Atlas named the 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year winners: 25 striking night-sky images chosen from a record 6,500+ submissions by photographers across 15 nationalities and 12 countries, featuring rare scenes—from Paranal’s telescopes to UNESCO sites like Valle de la Luna and a Hopi canyon—with EXIF data available.
An amateur astrophotographer, Mark Germani, spent about 18 hours imaging the Pleiades open star cluster from Vancouver using an Askar SQA55 refractor and a UV/IR-cut filter. The resulting deep-space image shows dozens of blue-white stars amid surrounding blue reflection nebulas, a foreground dust veil the cluster is moving through. The Pleiades lies roughly 445 light-years away in Taurus and is nicknamed the "Seven Sisters" after its seven brightest stars.
A ground-based image of the Small Magellanic Cloud captured from Cerro Pachón, Chile by Petr Horálek using a standard camera with a wide-aperture telephoto lens over four hours shows telescope-like detail, including intricate star fields and dust structures, underscoring how optimal conditions can make Earth-based imaging competitive with space telescopes and highlighting NOIRLab’s outreach through public-facing astrophotography.
A ground-based image taken from Cerro Pachón, Chile, captures the Small Magellanic Cloud—a dwarf galaxy containing hundreds of millions of stars about 200,000 light-years from Earth—with a wide-aperture telephoto lens in a four‑hour exposure; the result, taken by NOIRLab ambassador Petr Horálek, looks like a image from a space telescope but was photographed on the ground, highlighting the SMC’s visibility to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.
Astrophotographer Zachary Cooper captured the first-quarter Moon using a small refractor and a dedicated camera, taking many ultra-short exposures for the sunlit side and longer exposures to reveal earthshine, then merging the frames into a single image that shows dramatic daylight shadows at the terminator and the faint glow on the dark side—an image that mirrors how Artemis II views the Moon and reveals the Moon’s dual-night/day character.
Space.com highlights dramatic images from the 2026 Lyrid meteor shower, captured from both Earth and the International Space Station as Earth crossed Thatcher’s debris near the peak on April 22. Ground photos from Alberta and Minnesota show meteors blazing past auroras and city lights, while NASA astronaut Jessica Meir photographed a Lyrid from the ISS. Lyrids are among the oldest observed showers (about 2,700 years) and the event remains active through April 25, with up to ~20 meteors per hour near the peak. The piece also offers photography tips, gear notes, and mentions the next shower, the Eta Aquariids, in May.
British astrophotographer Josh Dury captured a striking predawn image of comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) rising above the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, as light pollution created a false dawn; the bright nucleus and a tail spanning about 10 degrees are visible to the naked eye ahead of PanSTARRS' perihelion around April 19–20, using 33 long-exposure frames with a Sony A7S III and a 135mm lens, and the comet likely originates from the distant Oort Cloud with an orbital period of about 170,000 years.
April 2026 offers a dramatic night sky for astrophotographers: the Pink Moon rises with sunset near Spica, a chance for striking foreground shots; Comet MAPS (C/2026 A1) may appear in twilight low in the western sky around perihelion; mid-April (10–20) provides dark skies for galaxy imaging (Leo Triplet, M104, M101, M81, M82); crescent Moon–Mercury–Mars conjunctions around Apr 13–15, and Venus with a crescent Moon on Apr 18; the Lyrid meteor shower peaks Apr 21–22 under good skies (15–20 meteors/hr); southern hemisphere observers may see Eta Aquariids. Practical tips include using a 300–600mm lens for close Moon shots, 200–400mm for Moon-and-planet pairs, and wide 14–24mm glass for meteors, with ISO 800–1600 and 20–30 second exposures; plan with a moonrise calculator and scout an eastern horizon foreground for best results.