Deep-Sky Astrophotography HOW-TO (Step-by-Step)

Few notes for better results:
1. When you do polar alignment refresh, step away from the mount, the weight of your body will affect where you point in the sky.
2. When you balance your scope, do it with all cables attached. Cables can greatly change balance of your scope, also you will see if your cables are going to catch on anything - your mount.
3. Platesolving with narrowband will be more successful if you change your GoTo exposure settings to 20 second, if still not successful, take a photo of 30s or 1min exposure and platesolve it. After that everything is very smooth.
4. For guiding at long focal lengths it helps to create darks for guide camera at the gain you are going to use to reduce the noise of guide camera.
5. Always remember LIVESTACK IN ASIAIR DOES NOT DO EQUATORIAL FLIP. WATCH YOUR TELESCOPE SO IT DOESN'T HIT THE MOUNT.
6. When IN AUTORUN MODE IT BECOMES CLOUDY AND AFTER EQUATORIAL FLIP GETS CLOUDY FOR SUCCESSFUL PLATESOLVING TRACKING WILL CONTINUE unless it finished full autorun, it won't park the scope. IT WILL CONTINUE WITHOUT STOPPING ALL DAY AND YOUR SCOPE MAY HIT YOUR MOUNT. Please help me to pass the info to them. GLOBAL TELESCOPE PARK FUNCTION NEEDED AFTER REACHING THE LIMIT OF THE SCOPE/MOUNT， Both - time limit and position limit for all observing modes. For sake of safety and equipment protection.
7. ZWO has released software for stacking and basic processing that is fast and free and produces great results, I love the denoise function.
8. For better cable management use the wider dovetail and run your cables underneath between the dovetail and the mount close to the point of the mount rotation. The forces caused by the pull of the cables, affecting your guiding will be proportionally smaller the closer you will get to the point of rotation.
If I will remember more, I will write more

Maybe its a dumb question but do i have to realign my mount to polaris after i point my telescope to the region i want? Im running a skyguider pro with ipolar.

Trevor, thank you so much for this video. I have a scope set up that is extremely close to yours and I have had it for nearly a year. I got so frustrated I gave up on it. To be honest I purchased the Seestar S50 about a month ago because I was so discouraged and using it has has got me some incredible photo's and wanting to go back to my original setup. Now after seeing you go thru this video, I'm confident that I can get it going. Really excited to get my scope going now. Great video, thank you very much.

I love these kind of Videos! I‘m getting quite serious into astro photography with my dslm and the lenses for that, but the next step is so big for me that i am soaking these informations like crazy!
Give us more videos like this :)

It should say a guide to if you have a pile of cash😆

Salom men sizni Oʻzbekistondan turib kuzataman teleskopni qayerdan olsam buladi

I always like the step by step tutorial the result is amazing.

How much power would you need if your backyard is 50 miles away? Not everyone can plug in to the house power.

This is unbelievable. A free astrophotography course. Thank you.

hi sir i am from india this product deliver in india

How to astrophotography: spend lot of money, fail ,repeat!

excellent tutorial. i will have to wait until i can buy the AM5 mount. thank you

does the asi air perform the dark, flat and bias frames

so you used the modified focal length because you installed a flatner, i am correct about this.

I second that, this isn’t for beginners however his tutorial is very informative. This hobby is very involved and I just started with a simple star tracker. Not only to have to learn the use of the equipment which in his example costs many thousands of dollars, then you have to learn the editing software!!!

Am i not supposed to tighten the clutches back down once im done polar aligning? if not, ive been doing that for a long time lol.

Very cool! Still, the question I have is . . . why go through all this effort and expense when you can simply ask folks who have higher quality setups in much better locations (like Chile or New Mexico) for their FITS and so then you'd only have to spend the time processing (which is where all the creativity is) locally? I don't see any satisfaction coming from being able to say, "Oh hey, look what I was able to acquire in the backyard here in [e.g. the Northeast]", because the capture is completely automated. What am I missing?

get something on yr feet girl!! 👟

Amazing video and so helpful and weirdly 99% of what I am about to buy and is in my basket. Please can I ask what filter holder that is it isnt in your description and would I need spacers at all for connect the field flatters filters holder and a ZWO ASI 533MC Pro. Many thanks for your time.

😕 'PromoSM'

Pro this, Pro that…doesn’t sound like a beginner price tag.

What dew heaters do you use?

Fantastic end product.

Outstanding Step-by-step Astrophotography workflow. Really very much appreciated. Very good! It's like having clear skies know-how. Thank you!

Great video's, new subscriber ,been watching all your video's there great ,really love this Asiair set up with the cameras and cell phone controls no need to bring the laptop ,way less cables, this is the exact same set up id like to get myself ,thanks for the videos

You could add 30 min to the end to complete the image Post Processing.

We don't too much money for beginners too expensive

You have more crap to hookup than NASA has for a space launch

I wasnt going to watch this at first as it was late & I was tired, & I was going to come back another night, but your warm profesional presentation style, informative dialog & honest enthusiasm just had me hooked & just had to keep my eyes open. It was such an enjoyable & educational tutorial, well done.

Can you get good images if you do not use the stand please tell

Hi Astrobackyard, im trying to use the Astrophotography tool but my 1300d dslr canon camera doesn't seem to work on it could you help me please. Most appreciated.

For a beginner, this video is kind of useless. Too much happening etc.

Mount camera and telescope would be much better, start alignment, focus, shoot, edit,

Haven't even watched the video yet, but I hope it's just what I need! The other month I went crazy and got a SVBony 80mm triplet refractor, Skywatcher EQ-6, some ZWO cameras (main and guide), and an ASIAir. Two nights out, and I've only managed to do the polar alignment and get the cameras focused. Nobody mentions that figuring all this stuff out in the dark is a lot harder than you think it will be! I'm cheating though since I also have a Vespera that I can easily program for the night and be guaranteed results while I fiddle around with my "real" telescope and try to learn how to actually do astrophotography.

Finally got to sit down and watch this whole thing. This is now the guide I'm going to send to people when they ask how to get started in this hobby. I love this video — and I love that you guys used a bit of older/more common gear that is more affordable to beginners, instead of the latest and greatest astro gear which I know you guys own too. Top notch content, Trevor and Ashley. I especially loved how you showed the entire polar alignment process in the ASIAIR — I haven't really seen anyone else cover that in full detail. Yes it can take 5-10 minutes of just turning knobs back and forth, but it is such a mundane but crucial step of this hobby. Great job guys!

If I could make ONE suggestion to anyone watching this: please make some layers in Photoshop so you can avoid destructive (unrecoverable) edits you make. I like to add a new layer for each major step I take and always leave a copy of the original at the bottom so you can go back. You can then save it as a PSD or TIFF file and save the layers so you can always go back and undo stuff.

This is JUST the video I was looking for for maybe a whole year
Thanks a lot
It’s just perfect as always !

I have a video idea that would be valuable to individuals like myself; have just developed an interest in astrophotography and are looking to make an initial/intermediate level purchase.

I would like to know, in your opinion, if you had 3 different budgets of €2,000, €5,000 & €10,000, how would you look to budget for the most optimal telescope performance? Budget would consider the necessary extras such as frames and cameras.

This would really help me out whilst deliberating about how much I am willing to spend, and it would also make for an attractive video idea overall I think!

Why didn’t u plug the ASIAIR into the usb port on the mount?

I have a huge question please reply is it important to use red head light and why?
Please reply me

So uhm.......You and I define "beginner" a bit differently. Amazing video tho!

Hi guys, my name is Chris playle from Wales United Kingdom, currently im imagine the cocoon nebula with my 1300d dslr canon camera and eq5 goto mount. With a OPtolong L enhance 2inch flitter with a flied flattener a my 80ed skywatcher APO refractor telescope. Thank you guys for your great chanel on Astrobackyard, brilliant 📸🔭

Very good, thank you. 👍🏻

I did look into this in a very heavy way. Here is what my conclusion was and still is: The amount of money you will need to spend to achieve any photos you take of the sky will pale in comparison to the ones done by our astronomers with their multi million dollar equipment, which you can see for free, on line.
When it comes to telescopes, "size does matter."

Brilliant, and thanks for explaining back focus

Did vantage use a mirage decoy? What was that?

And just for 5000 plus dollars you too can take PICTURES that can be downloaded for free on the internet. I get visual astronomy and maybe EAA but not electronically altered over spent pics.

That's not for beginners 🥴🤨

Video 1 of asking for the first review of the Pleiades 68 and 111….

By the time I can afford all that my eyes won't work.

Can you just plug the asi120mm into the usb on the asi533mc? Save the slot on the asiair? I just bought the zwo 30mm guide scope, asi120mm mini guide camera, asiair plus, and asi533mc pro camera. Want to make sure I am plugging things in correctly. Will be using my Rokinon 135mm f2 lens (nikon mount) with my SA GTi mount. Clear skies! (I apologize in advance for any clouds in the near future as a result of getting new gear)

Nice, Trevor. Why are you using a ST4 cable to attach the ASIAir to the EQ6R Pro? I use the USB port on my EQ6R and attach it to the ASIAir? I think the answer is that you have an older mount without the USB port.