Hi this is my first post for Nord Steorra, a blog for astrophotography. I am by no means a professional astronomer and this will be a journey of learning about equipment, capture and processing of mainly deep space objects outside our own solar system.

So what the hell is Nord Steorra?

It is a rough translation of North Star in Old English, the North Star is Polaris also known as the ship star visible anywhere in the Northern hemisphere of the planet and been used to aid navigation for countless generations.

So why this kind of photography

Well i love anything to do with space and i know you can go on google and find images from Hubble or JWST but there is something fascinating about achieving something for yourself, other photography just does not have that vavavoom for me.

What equipment will i be using

I have 3 telescopes to choose from and a few camera lens of varying focal lengths, the focal length determines how much zoom a lens or telescope will have.

The telescopes use a tracking mount that will accurately keep a deep space object for extended duration. I have 3 mounts two for telescopes and the other for my decade old DSLR.

So how does it work and how far can you see

How it works is a simple but also complicated, the simple explantion is that many images are taken and stacked together in software. The stacking is an averaging technique to reveal data over many images also known as sub frams.

As for how far you can see, i am unsure but galaxies can be imaged 100+ million light years away with modest equipment. The image above is of Bodes Galaxy & Cigar Galaxy approx 11 million light years away, to put that into persepective the Sun is around 8 light minutes away.

Can you image the moon & planets

Yes i can but this is not my main targets but sometimes it is fun and a great change of pace, this type of photography uses a different style.

This photography is achieved by taking many images really quickly, sometimes as many as 120 fps and stacking in software afterwards, the telescopes used in this photography have a long focal length (more zoom).

A few musing thoughts & promises

All photographs in Nord Steorra blog posts will be produced by me and will be free to use by anyone wishing to do so aslong as the sources are cited.

I will try and answer all questions in a prompt manner and to the best of my ability in a simple way.

I will try and image everytime the clouds part and share it here on the blog.

Subscribers and comments are more important to me than upvotes but i wont refuse either.

I will be open to requests of deep space targets, and my next target i want to try and image will be the surfboard galaxy and the owl nebula.

If you got this far thank you and consider subscribing. :-)