Astrophotography: History, Photographers and Techniques

Apr 18

What is astrophotography?

Astrophotography is photography of the night sky and of objects in space: the Moon, the Sun, planets, stars, nebulae and galaxies. Some astrophotographers work with a normal camera on a tripod. Others use telescopes, tracking mounts and special cameras, and combine hours of exposures into one picture. The genre sits between art, hobby and science.

Main approaches

Nightscapes and wide field. The Milky Way, star trails or the northern lights above a landscape, made with a wide-angle lens. It overlaps with night photography and landscape photography. Jerry Lodriguss is known for wide-field pictures and for teaching the techniques.
Planetary and lunar. High magnification through a telescope, usually by recording video and keeping only the sharpest frames. Damian Peach is known for detailed pictures of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
Deep sky. Faint nebulae and galaxies, with total exposures of many hours on a tracking mount. Rogelio Bernal Andreo is known for very wide, deep views of nebulae.
Solar and events. The Sun through safe filters, eclipses and transits. Thierry Legault photographed the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle crossing the face of the Sun.
Time-lapse. Hundreds of frames combined into a short film of the turning sky. See time-lapse.

History

Astrophotography is almost as old as photography. On March 23, 1840, John William Draper made a 20-minute daguerreotype of the Moon through a 5-inch telescope in New York. In 1850 William Cranch Bond and John Adams Whipple at Harvard photographed the star Vega, the first star other than the Sun on a photograph.

The faster dry plate made faint objects possible. In 1880 Henry Draper photographed the Orion Nebula with a 51-minute exposure, the first photograph of a nebula. In 1883 the amateur astronomer Andrew Ainslie Common recorded the same nebula with exposures of up to an hour and showed stars too faint to see by eye. For most of the 20th century, large observatories recorded the sky on glass plates.

From 1975 David Malin worked at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney. He made color pictures of nebulae and galaxies by combining three black-and-white plates exposed through red, green and blue filters, and his images were published around the world. Digital sensors and personal computers then put deep-sky imaging within reach of amateurs. Today small tracking mounts, dedicated astronomy cameras and smart telescopes that stack images automatically are widely available.

Techniques

Dark skies. Light pollution is the biggest enemy. Many astrophotographers travel to dark-sky parks and check the Moon phase and weather before they go.
Exposure without trails. On a fixed tripod, stars start to trail after a few seconds. The rule of thumb “500 divided by focal length” gives a rough limit in seconds on full frame. A star tracker that follows the sky allows much longer exposures.
Stacking. Many short exposures are combined in software to reduce noise. Dark frames and flat frames remove sensor heat and dust spots.
Focus. Autofocus does not work on stars. Photographers focus manually in live view on a bright star, often with a focusing mask.

How to start

Start with a camera on a tripod, a wide lens with a large aperture, and a dark place on a clear night without the Moon. Photograph the Milky Way or star trails. Try the Moon with a telephoto lens: it is bright and needs short exposures. Never point a camera or telescope at the Sun without a certified solar filter.

Books to start with

The Astrophotography Manual by Chris Woodhouse (Routledge). A detailed guide to equipment, capture and processing.
The Deep-sky Imaging Primer by Charles Bracken. An introduction to deep-sky imaging and processing.

Legacy

Astrophotography changed astronomy: photographic plates recorded stars and nebulae too faint for the eye and made it possible to measure and compare them. Amateur astrophotographers still contribute discoveries, for example of comets and supernovae, and projects such as The World at Night connect night-sky photography with landscapes and cultures around the world.

Discover astrophotographers · Astrophotography in the Photopedia Dictionary

Last updated: November 2026

Photopedia

Damian Peach

Damian Peach (born 1978) is a British amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He is known around the world for detailed photographs of the planets, made with telescopes on the ground.

Rogelio Bernal Andreo

Rogelio Bernal Andreo (born 1969) is an astrophotographer from Murcia, Spain, who lives and works in California. He is known for deep, wide views of nebulae, galaxies and faint clouds of dust.

Jerry Lodriguss

Jerry Lodriguss (born in the 1950s) is an American astrophotographer, author and former sports photographer. For more than twenty years he photographed sports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

David Malin

David Malin (born 1941) is a British-Australian astronomer and photographer. At the Anglo-Australian Observatory he invented new ways to pull faint detail and true color out of photographic plates.

Thierry Legault

Thierry Legault (born 1962) is a French amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He is known for photographs of the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope crossing the Sun.

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