arrowofsky's Sky Photography

[arrowofsky]

Greetings Everyone!

Here is my journey on learning to take as pretty as possible photos with whatever limited device I have.
I love this way of approach as:
1) I can reward myself if I manage to pass some milestones
2) It is more likely to learn more up to the reach the limits of the equipment

Major topics: Sunset, Sunrise, Night Sky, Astrophotography,
also Trees, Plants, Birds, Urban (when there is major sky involvement)

Equipments:
Camera 1: Vestel Venus E2 (8 MP mobile phone camera)
Camera 2: Samsung Galaxy A14 (13 or 50 MP mobile phone camera, F1.8, ISO 100-6400, Exposure 1/5000 s to 30 s)
Tripod: XITPHOTO Tripod, Can extend up to 1.50 meters, adjustable to any angle and orientation, absorb nearby traffic or low intensity gust vibrations
Telescope: 50x/100x Refractor Telescope, again up to 1.50 meters with its own tripod

~0.5 meter tall trapezoid aperture light shielding box, half-height black plastic covered
~ A medium sized box in between, wider aperture than 0.5 m tallest one, but 2x taller than the smaller box (this one is in fact not a box, just a sleeve, so it can be worn to the tripod or a similar equipment since both its bottom and top parts are open)
~10cm x 16cm rectangular aperture light shielding box, black plastic bag covered, cushioned from bottom with a scarf

Software:
Samsung Galaxy A14 Gallery
Windows Photos
Siril (to combine astrophotographic images)
DeepSkyCamera beta version (Consecutive-automatic long exposure photo capturing Mobile app)

Enough tech talk, let's decide with photographs if there is anything worth noticing!​

 

[arrowofsky]

>> Urban Sunset Images

No filter, No Adjustment - Sovereignty Park, Ankara

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No filter, slightly low exposure - Esat, Ankara, Türkiye

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The orange part in the centre of the image, above the urban street is frequently confused with a waterbody though it is just empty sky.


The same place of above, just another day and earlier hours

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No filter, Low Exposure - Tunalı Hilmi, Ankara

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>> Urban Night Sky Images

Waxing Moon (Telescope Eyepiece - NoFilter NoAdjustment)

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I was in Kreiken Observatory but I took this photograph through my own small telescope detailed above. No apparatus to fix camera to the eyepiece, hence, I am thankful I even managed to take this.


Crescent (Telescope Eyepiece - NoFilter Low Exposure)

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I took this photograph right in the middle of a street! I also don't have any apparatus that fixes my Camera 2 (Samsung Galaxy A 14) to the eyepiece, so this is definitely not the optimum of it, but still the best one I managed to take).


(I did try to take Jupiter and Mars, too, through my telescope, but they were not satisfactory, maybe next time with a bigger telescope and less light pollution!)


Vega - Cygnus Constellation (40 frame of 10 sec exposure ISO 400 images combined)

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I took this one in the heart of the capital almost. The brighter point at the centre of the image is Vega Star, left of it is Cygnus Constellation with its characteristic Cross shape.


(I will also upload my cloud series if people like these).

 

[Kiki]

ooohh nice!!! please keep it up I do like sky, celestial objects, horizon kind of photography!!!

also cygnus, my brother's fav constellation

 

[arrowofsky]

ooohh nice!!! please keep it up I do like sky, celestial objects, horizon kind of photography!!!

also cygnus, my brother's fav constellation

Ooookey, now for your brother, some in-your-face Cygnus containing takes (it is so easy as it is Northern Hemisphere summer constellation)

-Empty Sky Photograph, right in the middle of the road between trees (and its Astrometry.net solution):

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-Aggresive postediting in another scene, Cygnus, Lyra, Draco Head and Hercules part is obvious

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-Another aggressive postediting to the point of losing urban light pollution altogether, this time, opposite side of the Cygnus is available

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--- Double Post Merged, Sep 2, 2026, Original Post Date: Sep 2, 2026 ---

Now my best (as of yet)...

>>Cloud Photographs:

Waves in the sky (I knowingly arranged background, foreground and a tiny patch of branches at the top, but I am still unsure if it was the good thing to do, though if I crop that the photo became naked):

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Flying dinosaur:

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Cloud staircase to the moon (It did uncountable number of takes to have something like this, my audience/customers in bazaars etc. like this mid at best, while they generally love the things above):

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--- Double Post Merged, Sep 4, 2026 ---

Timelapse of Night Sky August 20, 2026 from several hundreds of frame with 10 sec, ISO 500, F1.8 photographs (no edit, no filter)
<-- click here to see 10 seconds of timelapse

 

[Kiki]

oh timelapse, amazing!! reminds me of my astronomy trip back then in 2024

 

[arrowofsky]

oh timelapse, amazing!! reminds me of my astronomy trip back then in 2024

How was it?
I hope i will also find a decent dark region trip for astrophotography soon.

 

[Kiki]

How was it?
I hope i will also find a decent dark region trip for astrophotography soon.

it was worth it I found several constellations, brightest stars, and even meteors too (I forgot which meteor rain it was, maybe Perseid). only minus was the temp, it was freezing (took place in Mt. Bromo). I cant stand cold haha

 

[arrowofsky]

!! A small upgrade on urban astrophotography !!​

I try to capture as many star as possible with higher ISO (roughly means the ratio of used incoming light in constructing the image, higher ISO then obviously gives higher light pollution in urban env., too) and exposure (10 seconds is optimum if you don't have a star tracker, but as in ISO, this also equates 10 seconds of urban light capture.) The following sample photograph is an example to this urban light, especially mind the central 'glow' on sky:

​

The intensity of glow is proportional to ISO and exposure, and dropping ISO and exposure significantly reduce captured stars while still having some glow. Long story short, I keep trying out different things to solve this, among one:​

1-] Going to the darkest street I know​

2-] Shielding the cam from the stray lights or street lamps as much as possible​

3-] Tweaking ISO/exposure settings (like longer exposure but smaller ISO etc.)​

4-] Getting out later and later to encounter less car and house lights.​

but one other simple thing I did improved far more than all these combined: a simple, 0.5 m height box to put around my mobile phone so it is at least not getting several meters of direct light. Compare the results yourself below:​

To make it better, I covered the box inner parts with a black material and it reduced the incoming light more. Yeah, there is some "reinventing the wheel" vibe here (which I like, tbh ), but it is also more educative in this way. As the geometry dictates, shielding from the stray light this way reduces the area we can observe. Maybe a taller box with wider opening will still give this clarity at least without glow but it might look weirder, as I am doing this in the middle of a street for now ​

Stay tuned for more improvements and much better images!​

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 6, 2026, Original Post Date: Sep 5, 2026 ---

It was years ago while I was working in a precision agriculture/IT firm in technopolis, and taking 'motivating' morning photos and sharing them daily. It felt very good to do so, but most photographs were only relatable for people who work in the same environment under similar conditions, hence I am not sharing them. Nevertheless, this one is more encompassing with a strong sunrise that illuminate everyone in the world at some point Behold!
An old photo with my "Camera 1":

Spoiler: Shine so bright that you can overcome obstacles without destroying them

 

[Kiki]

oh damn heavenly light lol

 

[arrowofsky]

>> Urban Night Sky Image Update!!

I found a place slightly darker and also permitting as wide as possible photographs. (From now on, I will directly put Lux meter information in lieu of "darker, bright, so bright" etc.). It was the edge for a park, and even nearer and darker places exist but we'll see about them later
Behold, my current best photograph:

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10'' exposure, ISO 700, Samsung Galaxy A14 12 MP, stacked 19 images only.​

Here is Astrometry.Net annotation with major constellations:​

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The horizontalish part of the Cygnus at the middle is also in the middle of Milky Way! My actual target to photograph visibly. Yes, there is glow again right in the middle, too, but it was too sad to put light shields and reduce width of the image just for removing glow still, tho, I tried with them as well.​

​

Here are my light shielding boxes with a 0.5 L bottle of water to the scale:​

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Example photos taken from them (the narrower one is from the taller box, as you may notice, there is some more light leaking, also coming from mobile phone's own light while taking photos in DeepSkyCamera software):​

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There is definitely much more potential to seize here to have better images. Maybe I can even try capturing Andromeda Galaxy in a later hour with a telescope, though capturing Milky Way will need some more things and a better cam than what I have. The things I will do to improve this Urban Astrophotography:​

• Also cover the smaller light shield box with black material​
• Seal bottom parts of box and mobilephone to stop letting light from bottom in a rough terrain, also stop letting the mobilephone's own light to the box and cam.​
• Record Lux before taking photo so we will see which Lux and which ISO/exposure/lightbox setting is effective​
• Make a wider aperture smaller box that still block most lamp light nearby but also give wider photos.​
• Try out DeepSkyCamera Free's bad pixel removal, hot pixel removal preprocessing/postprocessing algorithms as well.​

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 9, 2026, Original Post Date: Sep 7, 2026 ---

>> Urban Night Sky Update!!

First off, I did all the things I have stated above that I will try, some worked really well. I did improve the photographs I am taking, too, but yesterday I came up with another idea that is far practical and produced a lovely result still. Behold:

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All the dots on sky you see in this image is actually star. You can double-check with Stellarium. No error or whatnot.

• DeepSkyCamera hot pixel removal active,
• 2'' exposure,
• ISO 3200,
• 50 frame co-registered on top of each other,
• Averaged with outlier removal (1 std. dev. sigma clipping) in Siril

And bonus: I did not even have any baffle to reduce incoming light, imagine what it will get with them, and this is not the darkest street I can go, either. So I am really breaking my previous limits with this.

The exposure is comparatively shorter, so stars are sharper without post-processing. Since exposure is shorter, I could increase ISO to 3200 to capture more incoming light without choking stars with urban light.

The next target: darker place, stray light reducing baffles, taking 500 frames of 2 sec exposure, stacking as many of them as possible.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 17, 2026 ---

No photograph yet since the days were overcast or raining. But I did make some improvements in post-processing/stacking of photographs and I started to apply them to some of my photos. The first example is from 2029 09 08, with around 20 frames of 3200 ISO 2'' characteristics. I also sharpened and edited this a bit with typical brightness/contrast/sharpness etc. settings. The actual difference was that I stacked 20 frames myself manually with a custom Python code, rather than Siril software.

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Here is the actual detail: Siril looks for "star-like" objects in the image through the change in brightness in the pixel value, i.e. how bright a pixel is. In manual case, I chose 4 stars in one frame, and in the other I also chose the same stars, and matched these two images on a common frame using location changes on those within the time change the photograph were taken. In other words, I was marking points and see how they displaced in a given time, and that time was photo timestamp. It works nicely when you do it for 20 frames, in this case, a change of around 2 minutes and 15 seconds between the start and end. The easiest way to further improve this is probably manual markings in each 20 frames. I'll keep you posted, working manually instead of Siril is a rather big comfort.​

 

[89_Snehal]

I really liked the idea of light shielding box , I will try it next time , light pollution is getting worse day by day , how to add spoiler image tho , I clicked once with my phone

 

[arrowofsky]

I really liked the idea of light shielding box , I will try it next time , light pollution is getting worse day by day , how to add spoiler image tho , I clicked once with my phone

The exact way is this " [ S P O I L E R ] WHATEVER YOU WANT TO PROTECT AGAINST SPOILING [/S P O I L E R ] ", of course, you will not leave any space between spoiler letters.

I learnt that the technical term is "baffle". There is an optimum opening/aperture and height for it to both block stray light and also give you a cool, wide view still. Here is my sleeve baffle that I can use on top of my tripod.

Spoiler: Sleeve - middle sized light shield-baffle

and after first use, I found out that this is not tall enough, as the images had the central spherical glow of light that was not celestial. Since then, I could not go out to astrophotograph as the air is cloudy or rainy nowadays, but this night or tomorrow or soon, I will be able to produce some spectacular things, especially with a telescope assist.

My current best is, with some post brightness/sharpness/exposure/contrast edit, still from my small shield box.

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(with this, I feel like I am close to capture the shape of Milky Way with what I have and in the middle of the capital of Türkiye)

Here are the tips I directly experienced:

• Shield the stray light or simply find a place elevated from city light
• Target stars or regions on zenith, right on top of your head on sky
• Carefully adjust ISO and exposure (you are not forced to use 10-15 seconds for all, you may combine many frames of 2'' later which can amount to minutes easily)

 

[89_Snehal]

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:

This one I clicked with my motorola lol , village areas got some less light pollution , i recognised only few star alignment

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Me with stars , had to sit like a statue

 

[Lumii?!]

those pictures looks cool!

 

[89_Snehal]

I got more

 

[arrowofsky]

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:

This one I clicked with my motorola lol , village areas got some less light pollution , i recognised only few star alignment

Lol the motorola I know does not even have a camera. Orion is very obvious on the first one. Though I am currently not familiar with other constellations or star groups in your images, they are so good and cool. My current night sky features Cygnus, Lyra, Draco, Cepheus, Aquila, Pegasus, so I am familiar with them mostly these days. On village area thing, just wait to see what I can get in rural areas!

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Me with stars , had to sit like a statue

Niiice.
Let me give you me with stars photo, too:

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--- Double Post Merged, Sunday at 2:26 PM, Original Post Date: Sunday at 2:26 PM ---

I got more

Definitely you should open a separate thread for your photos, I will follow
(you might wait for permission).

 

[89_Snehal]

That selfie have the potential to be a mysterious figure on internet