Astro "photography" vs. Astronomy

I believe there is probably a pretty easy definition between these two styles.

In the photography sense, you want to tell a terrestrial story. Typically this is going to mean interesting  foreground subjects (trees, etc.) to go along with the amazing backdrop of our sky, often being the Milky Way or the Northern Lights. Even if you can't get those amazing subjects into frame, there is still much that can be said about our planet at night.

Take Tahoe, August 2019

In the "deep space" kind of astrophotography, the goal switches to telling a story about the sky itself. A photo of the sky is produced by interactions from photos near and far, some being being emitted from an electron changing orbitals from as long as 13 billion years ago and fought all odds to get here. For that, you really need to look at the Hubble Deep Field to appreciate it.



But your typical backyard astronomer, might focus on something closer, so maybe those photons are as little as 7,000 years ago (the Orion Nebula) but it is still pretty awesome to take a clear picture of stuff 7,000 years ago and 5,878,625,370,000 miles away TIMES 7,000.




 

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