I've been trying to learn my Nikon. Been trying to figure out how to take night shots.

Taken with Nikon D7200 with a Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm F1.8 at F1.8, ISO 800 and shutter speeds from 8 seconds to 20 seconds.

Mars blazing away.


Adjust the shutter speed a bit more...


And a bit more. Looks like noon at 11:40 pm. That's the moon shining behind the tree.


The fuzzy spot is the Andromeda Galaxy.



A tad closer.


Not bad for hand-held at 300mm. Nikkor AF-P DX 70-300 F4.5-6.3 ED VR.

Andromeda Galaxy at 35mm after processing with Photoshop Elements. Not the best. I'm convinced I can do better at 140mm F5.6, even in the middle of my light-poluted city. Gotta find the right ISO and shutter speed.

Several years ago i was huge into photography. I’ve not picked up a camera for fun in a long time. I need to dig it out and my fast glass and take some photos again. I read this morning Nikon has released a new mirrorless camera and glass. The Z6 and Z7. The Z7 is a nice looking camera but at 3300+ that’s a bit much.

I was never ever able to perfect astrophotography. I tried a few times but was never satisfied. I think you’ve done well. I always wanted to get my camera setup on a tripod that tracked with the earth’s rotation like they have for telescopes.

Cool!

Nice work!

The Andromeda shots are amazing!

Here's a resource that can help...

https://www.lonelyspeck.com/ad...ter-time-calculator/

Basically, for astrophotography, you want the fastest, widest angle lens you can find.

The wider angle the lens, the less apparent star trails are going to be--which then allows you to leave the shutter open longer. The longer you can leave the shutter open (without star trails), then the lower your ISO can be. As you know, ISO affects the noise in the image.

I'm limited to the lenses I have.

My fastest lens is a prime 35mm F1.8. These pics, except for the moon shot, were taken with that lens.

My next fastest lens is an 18-140mm F3.5-5.6.

My camera has a really wide ISO range of 100-26,000 or something like that. I could get into the 1000-1800 range with a F3.5-5.6 and be good on noise. I just have to find the sweet spot for shutter speed. Even at 8 seconds on the 35mm, the stars start to look like rice grains with their trails.

I need to to figure out the the sweet spot for ISO and shutter speed with a 300mm lense when phtographing the Andromeda Galaxy. If I want to see Andromeda's swirls, I'm going to have to go to a longer focal length, and 300mm is the longest I have. At F6.3 the right shutter speed and ISO will be critical,

To get really crisp picturess its less about one perfect shot than it is about a lot of really decent shots, then stacking them in Photoshop/Lightroom or Gimp and refining them into one image. That right there is the toughest thing to learn, it seems. It seems so complicated, that I am, for now, content to get one really good shot.