Hey everyone, Nico here, and today we have something extra special! For this five minute
friday, i asked a very talented astrophotographer from brazil named Olga Ismael to tell us about the
best untracked targets for the southern hemisphere and for those unfamiliar with the term untracked
it just means astrophotography without a star tracker so for these photos she's going to show
you Olga just used a stock dslr and normal photography lenses on a tripod i discovered
Olga's work on instagram where she not only posts her finished photos but also shares through her
story's progress on her astrophotography projects like a DIY roll-off roof observatory she built in
her yard and you can also follow her on astrobin to see the photos in higher quality all the links
will be in the description and with that i'll turn it over to Olga. Hi guys! My name is Olga and i'm
a 16 year old astrophotographer from brazil i live about 20 degrees south of the equator and i'm here
today to share some of my images that i made without a tracking mount, that's also called as
untracked astrophotography. First, to achieve any of the results i'm going to show here
you will need dark skies and i would say that imaging anything without narrowband filters on
heavily light polluted places is a very hard task you will need hours of exposure to compensate for
the low signal amount and in the end you won't be able to record some of the nebulosity that was
actually in there because even if you stack a million exposures of something that was
registered by your camera sensors as zero. Zero times ten is zero and zero times a million is
still zero, so it's not worth the try. I love to see people just ignoring this advice and trying
to do untracked astrophotography on heavily light polluted places. I haven't seen many people doing
that you can just stack a lot of frames to reveal those pixels that were registered as
one. The first image i'm going to show here is a single frame of the milky way galaxy passing by
the zenith you can just frame with Scorpio in the same place and it will be just as great! You can
use this lens the 18-55mm or the 50mm f/1.8. The best part you don't even need a DSLR to capture
a shot like this you can just use your phone it's a pretty simple task you can even stack those
frames and do untracked astrophotography with your phone. The best time of the year to photograph it
is from May until August so it's pretty much the best time of the year because you will have winter
and all of the winter constellations. It's cold so your camera sensor will get colder this means less
noise more signal and here in the South the milky way goes right into the zenith. One of the best
things you can ever see in life even if you're not an astrophotographer you will just admire a
lot of the milky way going right into the zenith. Having said that, the next target is the southern
cross until alpha centauri again a single frame taken with some clouds passing by if you take your
time to stack the coal sack nebula which stays at the Crux constellation you have a magnificent
result the Coal sack nebula contrasts very well with the milky way in the background it is one of
the easiest targets that you can photograph in the southern hemisphere i would suggest you to use the
18-55 mm lens step it down at 35 milliliters like this there's no need of fully open optics as this
object is very huge and bright so you can just step down if you have some issues with your
lenses and the best part you can even increase your exposure time as you're aiming something
that's near the poles. If you're familiar with it it's one of the most important things to do
increase your exposure and you're going to solve 90% of your problems this way if you're imaging
with six seconds when pointing at something near the equator you can just increase the time for
10 or 12 seconds when using a 50mm lens or even more if you're using a wider lens you can avoid
frames registered as zero and just make your image a better quality. Check out this graphic
i made it shows the relationship between exposure time and declination you must try
to use the lower focal length you can because this way you can increase your exposure time
and just makes things way better so let's jump to the next one the carina nebula
it is one of the brightest objects in the whole sky and it is definitely the brightest emission
nebula it sits closely to the southern cross and you can frame them together with the 50mm lens
and you can also just use a longer focal length to reveal some details and some colors as this nebula
is very bright and you can just try to get some of the details like the keyhole nebula and discern
the cores. This shot was made with this lens the 75-300mm and step it down at 200mm so this
way I can use it at 2.5 seconds to image it and in the end it was actually a pretty nice result
because i had really pinpoint stars. There is also no need for a modified camera as i still use
a stock camera until today even if with a tracking device you will not notice so much difference. The
core: with a stock camera is going to be blue and with a modified camera it's going to be red you're
probably not going to get anything else than just the core. The last target and in my opinion
the best ever to image in the southern hemisphere without a tracking device is the Large Magellanic
Cloud it's also the biggest galaxy visible to the naked eye here in the Bortle three to four skies i
can see it and it looks like a cloud just passing by. I would try to image with the 50mm f/1.8 lens
and as always you can increase your exposure time when you're aiming at something that stays
near the poles. You can just try to use 10 seconds exposures with a crop sensor DSLR and a 50mm lens
and you're going to rock it! You can even try this Small Magellanic Cloud which is a
another beautiful target and it's very bright. Well, that's it! I would like to thank Nico for
the opportunity of showing some stuff here. I would love to see people just trying to do more
untracked photography as we know astrophotography is very expensive and this is just a magnificent
way of starting and you have a lot of fun memories with it. You should remember that a simple setup
is not a limitation but rather a way of exploring your limits and just trying to do your best you
can even discover new things and just extrapolate some of the concepts that we know in this hobby
this is what makes astrophotography something you can't find anywhere else. Clear skies for all!