My Covid Story

That had nothing to do with Covid

In March of 2020, while everyone started to freak out about Covid, I learned that normal people could take photos of deep space. It blew my mind that I could take photos from my backyard reminiscent of those from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Since I found myself locked indoors like everyone else in the world, I went on a journey to figure out how to take a photo of a galaxy or nebula.

The process was so much harder than I had imagined. It took about six months before I could shoot something decent, and over a year before I was proud of it.

Because I love space and I know that others do too, I wanted to share my photos with anyone who wants them. So please take, share, and post any that you like. Just make sure to give credit.

— Matt

Gear & Process

Deep-sky astrophotography like this comes together from a telescope or camera lens mounted on a tracking mount that follows the sky as the earth rotates, a dedicated astro camera or modified DSLR, and a stack of narrowband or broadband filters that pull faint nebula and galaxy light out of a light-polluted backyard sky. Each image here is actually a stack of many minutes-long exposures — sometimes many hours of total integration time — combined and processed to reveal detail invisible in any single frame.