Learn Deep Space Astrophotography with a Telescope | Course by Galactic Hunter
Our Deep Space Astrophotography course is a premium online course that will teach you how to take beautiful pictures of deep sky objects with a telescope from beginning to end.
This is the most in-depth yet easy-to-follow class any amateur astrophotographer should join to get the absolute best out of your nights under the stars.
The Deep Space course consists of 12 chapters and 132 lessons, most of which include videos.
Learn to Capture Pictures of Space with Your Own Telescope
Have you ever dreamed of taking images like these? With the Deep Space course, YOU WILL be able to!
We'll give you our best tips to photograph nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters and show you how to process your data! In the span of just one week, you will have learned all you need to know about buying a proper rig, get familiar with how all the different parts of your setup work, how to shoot a deep sky object, and how to process it to get results similar to the ones above.
What is Covered in the Deep Space Imaging Course?
Getting Started and Planning Your Night
Before you invest in equipment or begin imaging, we go over all the important aspects of planning your night. The knowledge shared in these early lessons will ensure that you get the best out of every imaging session.
Some of the lessons cover:
What resource you should read to draw motivation for your goals
The best Astrophotography Apps and Websites
Light pollution and how to escape it to find the ideal imaging location
The best websites and apps to check the weather
How to look for the perfect dark site
What target you can image tonight
Planning your shot using different planetarium software like Stellarium and SkySafari
Potential dangers out on the field and how to deal with them
Equipment Selection and Setup
Astrophotography equipment can be expensive and confusing. What telescope should I get? How much money should I spend on the mount? Should I get a color or a monochrome camera? Let us take all these worries away from you, and help you build the perfect rig within your budget! We'll also teach you how to set it all up once you receive it!
Some of the lessons related to equipment selection and setup include:
Choosing the Right Equipment for Deep Space Astrophotography
How to Power your Astrophotography Equipment
How to Properly Setup a Tripod
How to Safely Attach a Mount to the Tripod
How to Attach a Telescope to the Mount
How to Attach a DSLR Camera to a Telescope
How to Attach a Cooled Camera to a Telescope
How to Balance Your Rig
How to Plug in the Cables (using a GEM mount and a DSLR camera as an example)
How to Plug in the Cables (using an AM5 mount and an OSC camera as an example)
Taking care of Cable Management
In some modules like this one, we'll also include bonus lessons called "Case Study" which will go over very specific cases like:
Case Study 1: Setting Up an EQ6 Mount and Refractor Telescope
Case Study 2: Setting Up a MyT Mount and Reflector Telescope
Case Study 3: Setting Up a Strain-Wave Gear Mount and Refractor Telescope
Software Mastery
In order to capture beautiful pictures of the night sky, you need to know how to use software! Whether you decide to use NINA, SGP, or the ZWO ASIAir to acquire your astrophotography data, expect to find valuable information on each program in the course! All of the most popular and best astrophotography software are covered here.
This chapter will cover everything you need to know about software for astrophotography, including:
How to Download ASCOM
How to Download Various Drivers for your Equipment
How to Download the Platesolver Catalogs
SGP: Dashboard Walkthrough and the Basics
SGP: Preparing Our Imaging Session
SGP: Acquisition Settings
SGP: Setting Up Text and Email Notifications
SGP: How to Focus Manually
SGP: Calibration Frames: Taking Darks and Flats
ASIAir: What Is It?
ASIAir: Initializing and Connecting the Equipment
ASIAir: How to Polar Align
ASIAir: How to Focus and Use an Electronic Focuser
ASIAir: How to Focus the Guide Camera on the OAG
ASIAir: Calibration Frames: Taking Darks and Flats
ASIAir Plus Full Walkthrough
NINA: Dashboard Navigation
NINA: How to Connect to Equipment
NINA: Sequencer Tutorial
NINA: Calibration Frames
NINA: Useful Settings
NINA: Useful Plugins
DSLR/Mirrorless Cameras for Astrophotography
If you are a complete beginner, you will likely start with either a DSLR or a Mirrorless camera. It is possible to get incredible awe-inspiring astrophotography images using a DSLR/Mirrorless camera... You just have to know how to use it right! Learn what model to pick, what accessories are worth purchasing, what the best settings for your target are, and more in this module.
The DSLR and Mirrorless chapter includes:
Choosing the Right DSLR/Mirrorless Camera
Camera Accessories: Make Your Life a Little Easier
Menu Walkthrough and Important Features to Activate
Main Menu Settings (ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture)
Summary of DSLR/Mirrorless Camera Settings
How to Switch to Manual or Automatic Focus
How to Switch to BULB Mode
How to Use an Intervalometer
How to Attach a Clip-On Filter to a DSLR Camera
How to Clean a DSLR/Mirrorless Camera Sensor
Astro-Mods: Should You Get Your Camera Modified?
Cooled Astronomy Cameras for Astrophotography
Mastering your DSLR camera is great, but if you're in this hobby for the long run, you'll eventually need to know all about cooled astronomy-dedicated cameras too! Whether you go with a color or monochrome camera, this astrophotography online course got you covered!
In this chapter, you can expect to get familiar with how astronomy cameras work, and understand the different features and settings associated with them. You'll also know what are the best astrophotography cameras available and more. Some of the lessons include:
One-Shot Color Cameras
Monochrome Cameras
The Anatomy of a Cooled Camera
Cropped Sensor vs. Full-Frame Sensor
What is the Benefit of Cooling?
What is Gain?
What is Binning?
How to Mount the OAG on the Camera
How to Clean your Astronomy Camera Sensor Window
Learn How to Use Your Telescope
The goal of this module is to not only teach you what is the best telescope for deep space astrophotography, but also to get you familiar with the telescope of your choice. By the end of it, you should have no issues using it and connecting any type of camera or accessory to it, no matter if you use a refractor or a reflector!
This chapter includes lessons like:
The Telescope: Refractor or Reflector?
Understanding Aperture
Understanding Focal Ratio
Understanding Focal Length
What are Field Flatteners and Reducers?
What is a Coma Corrector?
How to Collimate a Reflector Telescope
How to Calculate Back-Focus
Bahtinov Mask or Auto-Focuser?
How to Focus Using a Bahtinov Mask
How to Focus Using an EAF
How to Clean Your Telescope's Mirrors
Understand Mounts and Tracking
The mount is the most important part of the astrophotography rig, and it can also be the most difficult to master. This is why we have a chapter dedicated to motorized mounts and how to use them!
Here, you'll learn all about astrophotography mounts, with lessons like:
Choosing a Mount... What is the best astrophotography mount?
How German Equatorial Mounts Work
How Strain Wave Gear Mounts Work
How to Polar Align a German Equatorial Mount Without Tools
How to Polar Align with the QHY Polemaster
Auto-Guiding: Guide Scope Vs. Off-Axis Guider
How to Calibrate and Start the Auto-Guider
Filters: When and How to Use them?
Filters can be used with any camera, and are useful to either block light pollution, shoot a target through specific wavelengths, or both! Adding filters to your setup can seem scary if you are a beginner, so let us help you get all the knowledge you need to select and use the right filters!
Learn about all kinds of filters with lessons like:
Filters: Do You Need Them?
CLS Filters
Dual-band Filters
Monochrome LRGB Broadband Filters
Monochrome HSO Narrowband Filters
How Does a Filter Wheel Work?
Practice on the Field
If you've gone through all the chapters so far, you should now be fully familiar with your rig and are ready to image! This module is made up of several case studies that cover how to take pictures of deep sky objects using different setups and from different places (city backyard, desert...). Additional lessons like how to take calibration frames are also added to this chapter.
Here, you will find lessons like:
Case Study 1: Imaging a Cluster with a DSLR, Refractor, and Intervalometer
Case Study 2: Imaging a Galaxy with an OSC Camera, Reflector, and SGP
Case Study 3: Imaging a Nebula with an OSC Camera, Refractor, and the ASIAir
Case Study 4: Imaging a Nebula with an OSC Camera, RASA, and SGP
Case Study 5: Imaging a Nebula with a Monochrome Camera, Refractor, and SGP
Passing Time While Imaging
Calibration Frames: How to Take Darks, Bias, Flats, and Dark Flats
Learn How to Process Your Data
This wouldn't be an astrophotography course without a chapter dedicated to processing! We will teach you several ways to stack your files and show you examples of workflows on different targets so that you can recreate what you see to obtain the best possible result out of your data.
In this chapter, you will learn to process your data with lessons that include:
Importing the Files
Debayering: Why is it Important?
Stacking with Deep Sky Stacker
Stacking with PixInsight
Access our Processing Guides Here!
How to Process a Nebula
How to Process a Galaxy
End of Chapter Quizzes
At the end of each chapter you will find a short quiz to help refresh your memory on what you just learned and see if you retained all the important information. These are optional, but a fun way to end each chapter trying to get a high score!
We also have one survey at the very end of the course which will help us get honest feedback from students and keep finding ways to improve the lessons over time!
Your Instructors
One thing we remember from school is that as a student, you are much more likely to enjoy a class and get good grades if the teacher is likable, knows their stuff, and cares about you. We believe that this is also the case for this course!
We are Antoine and Dalia, we have been doing astrophotography for more than 10 years and have been sharing our journey along with tons of tutorials on our YouTube channel and our website.
For all these years, we have worked hard to produce free videos and written tutorials to help beginner astrophotographers get better pictures of the night sky. We also spend several hours every single week replying to all the e-mails we receive requesting help from us. We care about everyone we interact with in this hobby, and we love seeing you progress over time.
In all these years of experience doing astrophotography full-time, we've helped hundreds of beginners troubleshoot issues and get better, worked with many astronomy companies, mastered almost all aspects of astro-imaging, and received so many awards and features, like NASA APODs, AAPOD2s, magazine and books publications, TV documentaries, News articles, and more. We actually got overwhelmed with all the features we got that we stopped updating our Awards page!
Some of the places where our images got featured
Other works we've done include books, like The Astrophotographer's Guidebook, The Messier Catalog Workbook, and The Constellations Handbook which all have excellent reviews on Amazon.
As your mentors, we will be with you whenever you need help and do our very best to skyrocket your astrophotography skills so that you can also, one day, get too many features and awards to keep count!
Why Get One When You Can Get All?
Our Deep Space Imaging course is part of the Galactic Course Ultimate Bundle, which also includes our courses on Milky Way photography, Star trails, Time-lapses, Remote Imaging, all our processing guides, and several perks!
The Ultimate Bundle, as well as the other two, have a small annual renewal fee, but include so much more and regular updates! Try it and feel free to cancel at any time if you do not like it!
We strongly suggest getting the Ultimate Bundle to unlock all our learning content and get the very best out your investment.
Each bundle also gives you bonus perks, like access to our private community on Discord, priority email support whenever you contact us, and much more depending on the bundle!
Deep Space Astrophotography Course - Final Thoughts
Whether you get into our Deep Space Astrophotography with a Telescope course or join the Ultimate bundle, we guarantee you that you will learn a lot about astro-imaging!
We've been doing astrophotography training both online and in person for years, and absolutely love it. We believe this to be the best Astrophotography course for beginners, but we also cover advanced techniques in deep space photography that ensure everyone can learn no matter your level. This can be seen as an astro photography workshop in the form of an online comprehensive guide that you can go through dozens of times.
We hope to see you become a member and share your first images on the Discord channel!
Clear Skies,
Antoine & Dalia
Galactic Hunter
