SKILLS FOR STARGAZERS

Take great photos of the Milky Way

- ALL PICTURES: MARY MCINTYRE

How to capture, stack and process your way to glorious shots of our Galaxy

The Milky Way is a firm favourite for nightscape photographers and astrophotographers alike, but beautiful images of our Galaxy are well within reach of beginners with basic entry-level equipment too.

While a longer focal length will capture specific regions such as nebulae, here we'll show you how a wide-angled lens and short, untracked exposures can capture more of the Milky Way at once and achieve stunning results.

There are several advantages to shorter exposures. They reduce the chances of capturing unwanted aircraft, satellites or light pollution. They can also be taken without a specialist tracking mount, so there's less equipment to carry and set up. And when it comes to photographing the Milky Way near the horizon, short exposures won't blur the foreground, so you can skip the step of having to blend separate background and foreground photos.

Be prepared

Start with a little planning. To determine what time of year is best for capturing different regions of the Milky Way from your location, try a planetarium app such as Stellarium. Shooting on a moonless night is preferable. You'll need to work out the correct exposure length for your lens. The longer the focal length, the shorter the exposure needs to be to keep your stars sharp.