Astrophotography can be a very tricky and specialized genre, but it is also highly rewarding when you get it right. This awesome video will walk you through the entire process from start to finish to get your first image.
Coming to you from Astro Backyard, this helpful video will show you everything you need to know about deep sky imagery with a German equatorial mount. Astrophotography is of course highly difficult simply because of the extremely low levels of light. The next complication is that you're limited in how long you can expose for because of the rotation of Earth, which means the star field is always moving across the sky. As your focal length increases, the available exposure time decreases, which is of course a problem is you're trying to image something that needs a high degree of magnification. This is where an equatorial mount comes into play: it counteracts the rotation of Earth to make the starfield effectively motionless from the perspective of the camera, thereby allowing you to take much longer exposures. It's certainly time-intensive, but I also find it very exciting and rewarding. Check out the video for the full method.
