Beginner's guide
Astrophotography for beginners
You do not need a telescope to start photographing the night sky. This guide walks you from your first handheld Moon shot to tracked wide-field images, with settings you can copy and event-specific tips drawn from our observing guides.
Start with what you have
The honest gear ladder — each step is optional, and each one works on its own.
Any camera + tripod
A phone on a £10 tripod or any DSLR/mirrorless camera can capture the Moon, bright conjunctions, and star trails. Stability matters more than the camera.
Kit lens, 18–55 mm
Perfectly usable for constellations, Milky Way wide shots, and eclipses. Shoot at the widest aperture (lowest f-number) your lens offers.
Telephoto, 200 mm+
The first worthwhile upgrade. Fills the frame with the Moon during eclipses and resolves Jupiter's moons and Saturn's shape.
Star tracker (later)
A motorized mount that follows the sky's rotation. It removes the exposure-time limit and is the gateway to deep-sky objects — but only once the basics feel easy.
The five settings that matter
Get these right and everything else is refinement.
- 1
Manual mode, always
Auto exposure will fail in the dark. Set aperture, shutter speed, and ISO yourself — the camera's meter is useless at night.
- 2
Widest aperture
Open to f/2.8 or the lowest f-number your lens has. Stars are point sources: aperture controls how much light you gather, not depth of field.
- 3
The 500 rule for shutter speed
Divide 500 by your focal length to get the longest exposure before stars trail. A 20 mm lens on a full-frame camera: 500 ÷ 20 = 25 seconds. Crop sensors: divide the result by 1.5.
- 4
ISO 800–3200 to start
High enough to record faint light, low enough to keep noise manageable. Take test shots and adjust — every camera has its own sweet spot.
- 5
Focus on a bright star, manually
Autofocus cannot lock onto the night sky. Use live view at maximum zoom on the brightest star or planet and turn the focus ring until it is a sharp point.
Shooting real events
The same tips we attach to every event page, collected in one place.
Lunar eclipses — the easiest first target
- •No filters or special equipment needed — a lunar eclipse is entirely safe to photograph.
- •A telephoto lens of 200 mm or more on a tripod gives a satisfying disc; totality needs roughly 1–2 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 800.
- •The Moon's colour during totality depends on dust and cloud in Earth's atmosphere — anything from copper to deep brown is normal.
Solar eclipses — safety first
- •Never point a camera at the uneclipsed Sun without a certified solar filter over the front of the lens — sensors burn instantly.
- •The filter stays on for every phase except totality itself; only then can you shoot the corona directly.
- •Bracket exposures widely during totality — the corona spans many stops of brightness.
Meteor showers — patience and volume
- •Use a fast wide lens at f/2.8 or wider, 15–25 second exposures, and shoot continuously all night — meteors are unrepeatable.
- •Aim about 40° away from the radiant rather than straight at it: meteors there leave longer trails.
- •Give your eyes 20 minutes to dark-adapt and avoid white light entirely, including your phone screen.
Planets, oppositions & conjunctions
- •Planetary imaging works best by recording short video and stacking the sharpest frames — free software like AutoStakkert does the stacking.
- •Let a telescope cool to ambient temperature for 30 minutes before high-magnification work, and shoot when the planet is highest in the sky.
- •For conjunctions, wide-angle shots that include a foreground landscape are far more striking than the pairing alone.
Every event page on Cosmos Explorer carries tips matched to that event's type, plus timing and direction computed for your location.
Planning a shoot
Dark skies and timing matter more than gear.
- •Check the Moon first. A full moon washes out everything except itself — plan deep-sky sessions within a few days of new moon.
- •Get away from direct lights, even if you cannot leave town. A shadowed spot improves your sky enormously.
- •Thin high cloud ruins more sessions than rain. Check a forecast with cloud cover a few hours ahead.
- •Use red torchlight when setting up — it preserves the dark adaptation you spent 20 minutes building.
The homepage computes tonight's sky quality, moon phase and a visibility score for your exact location, and the night sky map shows you where to point the camera.
Learn from the masters
Study how professional observatories capture the same objects.