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Written by Jackson Datkuliak, last updated 11/23/2024

Beginner Resources

There is a significant amount of information I left out of the beginner articles to try and keep it (somewhat) reasonable for an average person to read and learn about astrophotography. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, you can reach out to me through my discord! I’d be happy to answer any questions. I would also like to list some great beginner resources to learn about astrophotography. This hobby is incredibly in depth, and if you are truly interested in taking it on, having some good learning resources will be absolutely necessary. One of the biggest sources of learning for me was through watching YouTube videos. I will warn you, there are a lot of people on YouTube that have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. I will list some YouTubers that I believe have good, informative videos for beginners. I am NOT endorsing everything these guys say, but I can definitely say they have all had a big impact on my astrophotography journey.

Nico Carver, Nebula Photos creates fantastic beginner and budget friendly tutorials

Trevor Jones, AstroBackyard creates fun, cinematic tutorials and reviews

Cuiv, The Lazy Geek creates in-depth, information dense videos that cover complex astrophotography topics

There are also great guides online written by community members

Charlie Hagen's Guides (including an easy to follow guide on MSGR)

And you can never go wrong reading the documentation!

Official PixInsight Resources

Siril Documentation

NINA Documentation

PHD2 Documentation

I always recommend people try processing other's data, so in addition to some of the discord servers listed below having data sharing channels, you can find free data to process at these links

Bortle.org (including some of my datasets!)

Damen's Datasets

MAST: Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes

You will inevitably find yourself with lots of questions and no answers, so here are some discord servers where you can ask more experienced astrophotographers specific questions about anything

Observational Astronomy

Friendly Cosmos

And finally, heres a few more pictures I didn't know where else to put on in the blog. I hope you like my cat.