{"id":2292,"date":"2024-10-16T15:47:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T21:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/?p=2292"},"modified":"2024-10-16T15:47:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T21:47:07","slug":"how-come-your-space-photos-arent-blurred-with-streaks-people-ask-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/?p=2292","title":{"rendered":"“How come your space photos aren’t blurred with streaks?” (people ask me.)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>
My photo of Little Sombrero Galaxy (NGC 7814), It’s a tiny little thing (to us), 40 million light years way. Photo is 6 hours, 14 minutes integration (combined exposure)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SO I like to take photos of space. Of things quadrillions of miles away from Earth. It’s not easy, involves advanced equipment and skill. I do it any night when there aren’t clouds \/ rain \/ snowing \/ forest fire smoke \/ or near \/ on the full Moon (which makes it hard to shoot anything but the Moon.) I love taking these photos, and I share them.
\nHere are all my astro photos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I post these photos on social media, I invariably get some version of this question (re-posted with permission):<\/p>\n

James Lascko: Just jaw dropping!!\u00a0 Nice work… Forgive this question, but I was wondering… if the Earth is spinning at 1,000 miles at the Equator and the estimated speed of the Earth traveling around the Sun is 67,000 miles per hour… why are these stars and galaxies not leaving streak trails in this picture as the Earth moves for several hours?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The answer (which I’m posting here so I can just link when asked and not re-type it) is:<\/p>\n

This mount my scope sits on (the white thing in the below pic) has two highly accurate motors, 1 for each axis, computer controlled, moves with the rotation of the Earth so it’s always on the target I’m shooting.<\/p>\n

Here’s a pic from the other night of my setup. This photo is illuminated by the light of the Moon. The mount moves 1 Sidereal day per day, which is the ACTUAL length of a day: 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.0905 seconds. (the fact that it’s not 24 hours is why we have leap days every 4 years.)<\/p>\n

I shoot many 2 minute shots, then stack them. Some people shoot longer than 2 min each shot but I get random clouds a lot which means I have to toss out more images if I use longer shots.<\/p>\n

Here are photos of my setup, at night, and also during the day (and here are more photos of the making of the AstroHut, my concrete observatory<\/a>):
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Me with my 1000 mm Newtonian telescope.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SO I like to take photos of space. Of things quadrillions of miles away from Earth. It’s not easy, involves advanced equipment and skill. I do it any night when there aren’t clouds \/ rain \/ snowing \/ forest fire smoke \/ or near \/ on the full Moon (which makes it hard to shoot … Continue reading ““How come your space photos aren’t blurred with streaks?” (people ask me.)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mdad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwdean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}