[hengheng]

Nowadays, most people who say astrophotography don't mean Deep Sky photography, hunting planets, nebula and galaxies. It's mostly the sky over a wide-angle landscape. "Astrophotography" happens at < 20mm.

Totally viable untracked. The classic 14mm prime has gone from f2.8 to f1.8 to f1.4, and sensors have become really good at high sensitivity for a 15 second exposure. Quite often, that's enough.

The hairy part is when it's not quite enough, and exposures have to be stacked. I have a crop sensor camera (canon 1.6x, so 40% area) with an f/2 lens that I like to step down further, and a good Starscape this way will take 10-40 exposures. I can stack those no problem, but it's trees on the horizon that are problematic. The ground stack and the sky stack have to clash, and a complex shaped border will always look photoshopped, because it is.

Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to a) pictures being available online, meaning that you've already seen the better version of the same photo, and b) the images being sterile and without context, with no relation to the photographer's story. Milky Way in a national park says "I've been there!" in a way that a shot of the Whirlpool Galaxy just can't.

[dylan604]

Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to C) too many ruined images from man made objects floating through the shot, D) a helluva lot more equipment required than just a camera and a lens

I love the wide angle astro stuff, but I'm more into timelapse. But I do love "trying" shooting DSO as well, but tracking is obviously required.

[jebarker]

> Old school Deep Sky is losing its appeal due to a) pictures being available online, meaning that you've already seen the better version of the same photo

I find deep sky astrophotography compelling because there's still a huge difference between _my_ image of a galaxy and the many "better" ones already available. The difference is that I went through the experience of taking it so it feels more like it's really there. It's the closest I can get to actually experiencing seeing the galaxy with my naked eyes. The ideal would be visual astronomy of DSOs but that'll never be possible.

[hengheng]

I mean, there are also still radio amateurs out there, but the hobby has seriously lost appeal with the arrival of the internet. And the crowd that you're a part of is not growing either.