Under the suggestion of a fellow Arcanum member, I purchased Royce Bair’s “Milky Way Nightscapes – A guide to photographing the Milky Way“. It’s 140 pages of practical tips on how to photograph the milky way (as the title obviously suggests). I’m still learning astrophotography, but it’s proven useful so far, even after a quick read.

In the book, it goes over many things, including how to remotely compose your shots before you even leave home (using free or cheap software such as Stellarium, along with Google Maps), post-processing using Adobe Camera Raw, lighting the foreground with a variety of lights (and even includes formulas for calculating light intensity and such) plus ideal camera settings for various print types.

If you have $20 USD and a keen interest in astrophotography, it’s well worth a look. The weather has been rather terrible most of the last week, but we’ve had some great weather this weekend, so I’ve had more chances to get out and put into practice what I’ve been learning. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m slowly getting there!