About

 

 

Welcome.  My name is Greg Priestley and I'm an amateur astronomer and astroimager.

 

astroimaging.gallery is finally a single website that I can point people to that showcases some of my work, which is a mix of photos and videos.

 

Whilst I’ve had an interest in astronomy (and science) since high school, it wasn’t until the early 2000’s that I became active.

My astroimaging is shot with standard Digital SLR’s / mirrorless and tend to focus on wide fields of view of the night sky using standard camera lenses (i.e. not attached to telescopes).

Whilst at it’s most simplest this involves dropping a tripod down with your camera on it, focussing and shooting, these days the majority of my time is spent undertaking time lapses and in more recent times have added motion to provide an extra dimension to the footage.

Timelapses involve a lot of images and a lot of data.  Each individual frame of a time-lapse might be a photo with 12 to 30 seconds of exposure, shot across the entire night.  I can end up with well over 2,000 raw images in a night per camera, and sometimes I shoot four cameras at once.  It’s not uncommon to generate 200 Gb of images in a single night.

 

All for a few minutes of footage that many people will get bored with watching in a few seconds.  But if you sit back and really watch, there are so many things to see.  Some of the things you'll find here on my website include:

  • Meteors (including those with meteor trains)
  • Comets
  • Total solar eclipse
  • Partial solar eclipse
  • Satellites including geostationary, Iridium and iridium flares, SpaceX
  • International space station
  • Rockets
  • Galaxies
  • Atmospheric seeing differences
  • Horizon extinction
  • Sky glow / oxygen
  • Clouds, High clouds and really cool cloud structures
  • Lightning & elusive lightning Sprites
  • Dew
  • Moon light pollution
  • Zodiacal lights

Some of the equipment I've used over time include:

 

Cameras:

  • Sony A7 III (2018-current)
  • Sony A7S (2014-2019)
  • Sony A7 (2015-2019)
  • Canon 5D Mark IV (2016-current)
  • Canon 5D Mark III (2012-current)
  • Canon 5D Mark II (2008-2014)
  • Canon 7D (2010-2015)
  • Canon 40D (2007-2010)
  • Canon 20D (2004-2007)

Lenses:

A variety of Canon lenses, plus:

  • Samyang 14mm f/2.8 (Canon mount)
  • Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 (Sony E mount)
  • Samyang 24mm f/1.4 (Canon mount)
  • Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 (Sony E mount)
  • Samyang 35mm f/1.4
  • Samyang 85mm f/1.4
  • Metabones adapters

Motion:

  • eMotimo TB3 with Dynamic Perceptions Stage Zero motorised slider
  • Alpine Labs Radian (motion panning)

Telescopes:

  • Meade ETX-125 (mount and scope)
  • Orion ED-80 scope

Mounts:

  • Meade LX-80 mount
  • iOptron SkyTracker

Exposure Ramping:

  • TimeLapse Plus
  • RamperPro

Current Software:

In approximate order of how frequently I use them:

  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic
  • LRTimelapse
  • ImageMagick
  • Apple Compressor
  • Adobe Photoshop CC
  • Apple Final Cut Pro
  • AutoPanoPro
  • GBdeflicker
  • Apple Motion
  • Hugin

 

Legal Stuff

All the images and videos on this website are copyright.  If you'd like to use the images and/or videos in any way then please contact me.