Discussion - Is astrophotography hard?

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Is Astrophotography Hard?

A Personal Reflection on the Astrophotography Learning Curve

I got caught out today by my young niece.

She was looking at one of my images – NGC 1499 The California Nebula – some stars, the nebulae, distant light captured from the darkness - and she paused before saying:

“Astrophotography must be really hard to learn”

It stopped me in my tracks. I’ve never thought of the last three years of intensive learning as hard. But, have the last three years been difficult?  Have I achieved anything worthwhile so far?
Where exactly am I on this astrophotography journey - and where am I heading next?

Those questions have lingered with me far longer than I expected.

 

A recent image - NGC 1499 The California Nebula

So, is Astrophotography Difficult… or Just Deeply Rewarding?

Her comment took me back many years to another question I was once asked - this time about building my own boat and learning to sail it.

I remember giving a rather downbeat assessment of my abilities. I could sail, yes - but badly, I thought. An old salt gently corrected me.

“Very few people ever build their own boat”.
“Fewer still sail one they built themselves”.

The fact that I sailed poorly was almost irrelevant. I was out there. On the water. In challenging conditions. Safely. Without rescue services being called. That alone was always a huge achievement, I felt.

And that’s when it clicked.

Astrophotography is much the same.

Yes - it’s tricky. Yes - it has a steep learning curve. But if you can get past those first obstacles, it becomes one of the most rewarding creative and technical hobbies imaginable.

A couple of weeks later, still musing on this question about ‘hardness’, I came across a blog that was asking the exact same question – sadly I forgot to book mark it – something I have subsequently come to deeply regret – but more about that later.

 

One of the very first deep space images I took, three years ago M42 Orion nebula

Why the Astrophotography Learning Curve Feels So Steep

Astrophotography isn’t hard because of one thing - it’s hard because it asks me to learn many things all at once, and whilst I pride myself on being a life-long learner, my old brain is slowing down slightly -

• Understanding astronomical objects and their location in the night sky
• Choosing, assembling, and mastering equipment
• Capturing usable data
• Learning image processing software
• Overcoming self-doubt when my images don’t look like others’
• Developing a personal artistic style

And because it is art as well as science, it’s deeply subjective.

Add in the contradiction – that some nights feel magical whilst others feel utterly demoralising and any progress I make requires self-belief, resilience, patience - and perseverance in large doses.

 

IC 1318 taken from my Bortle 5 back garden in the Plymouth outer suburbs

My learning journey

Looking back, I can clearly see that my journey has unfolded in distinct stages/phases. Now this is where I should mention a blog by someone called Patrick – the really interesting blog that I failed to bookmark, a sin that I profusely apologise for. Patrick had already started thinking about the phases of learning astrophotography – I can’t remember lots of what he discussed but I hope I can share the essence here – along with some more thinking on my part.

 

Phase One: Being Honest With Myself

This phase was about curiosity turning into commitment.

• Using stargazing apps and taking blurry phone photos of the night sky
• Learning basic astronomy - constellations, nebulae, galaxies
• Researching beginner astrophotography equipment
• Buying a telescope and accessories
• Spending many nights doing visual astronomy

And then – finally - admitting the truth after a moment of searing clarity: I was more interested in imaging the universe than simply observing it.

 

Phase Two: My First Deep-Sky Image (And the Hook Is Set)

This was, for me, the hardest phase so far.

And also, the most intoxicating.

Suddenly I was learning everything - often badly, occasionally well, always enthusiastically:

• Moving my DSLR from auto to manual – and actually understanding the exposure triangle
• Choosing a tracker, tripod, lenses, power solutions
• Learning polar alignment, levelling, and balancing
• Installing and troubleshooting software
• Understanding histograms, ISO, exposure length
• Learning star hopping and sky mapping
• Capturing 1–3 minute subs
• Stacking data using DeepSkyStacker and Affinity Photo

And then… M31

Taken two years ago - one of the first images I captured with my new xzenithstar 61ii refractor

This single image represented countless mistakes, frustrations, late nights, and lessons learned the hard way. Only those who’ve tried astrophotography truly understand what it takes to get that first 'proper' deep-space object.

 

Phase Three: The Long Road to Quality Data (Where I Am Now – I think – I hope!)

This phase is about refinement - doing the basics properly.

• Upgrading to a 61mm refractor and a Samyang 135mm
• Moving to a better EQ mount – the EQM-35-PRO
• Astro-modding my DSLR
• Adding broadband and narrowband filters – Optolong L Pro and Optolong L-enHance
• Implementing guiding with ASIAIR Mini and ASIair 120mm guide cam with RVO 32mm guide scope
• Learning plate solving and sequencing
• Improving polar alignment and focus using Bahtinov masks
• Understanding guiding graphs and troubleshooting tracking
• Capturing calibration frames correctly
• Extending integration times
• Building a solid processing workflow (Siril, GraXpert, Seti Astro, Affinity Photo)

This phase is relentless - but deeply satisfying.

Each week brings small gains. Fewer mistakes. Better stars. Cleaner data. Not always - but more often than not now. 

M33 captured two years ago

Phase Four: Post-Processing… My Achilles’ Heel

Let’s be honest.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you already know this:

I suck at post-processing.

It’s a minefield.

And yet it’s everything.

Post-processing is where good data becomes great images. It’s both technical and artistic - and right now, I’m failing at both.

Phase Four is going to be long. Very long.

For 2026, my focus is clear:

No more new equipment until I can do something meaningful with the data I already collect.

Because what’s the point of great data if I can’t turn it into something beautiful?

 

Beyond Phase Four: What Comes Next?

Once post-processing improves, new doors open – I hope -

• Advanced acquisition and processing
• Multi-night imaging
• Highly accurate guiding and dithering
• Mastery of star removal, colour calibration, stretching, curves
• Creating striking, high-contrast images with refined structure

 

Then - perhaps one day - Phase Five:

Advanced Narrowband & Mono Imaging

• Mono cameras
• SHO / HOO palettes
• Managing 10–30 hours of data
• Linear vs non-linear workflow mastery

Maybe even large reflectors, long focal lengths, planetary imaging, and - dare I say it - a remote observatory.

Pipe dreams, perhaps.

But every journey starts with crawling. Well mine do!

 

Is There a Phase Six?

I think there might be.

It’s the phase where style emerges.

I don’t know what mine is yet—but I recognise the feeling. After 15 years blogging and vlogging about dinghy cruising, I developed a distinct voice without planning it. It evolved naturally.

I suspect astrophotography will be the same.

Maybe I’ll specialise.

• Artistic deep-sky
• Scientific photometry
• High-resolution planetary
• Wide-field mosaics

Who knows?

 

NGC 7000 - imaged last year 

How Long Will all This Take?

I have no idea.

Learning isn’t linear. I move forward, backward, sideways. I travel at my own pace, often oblivious to others progress, but focused on trying to give something back to the community – payback for all the help I have received from so many generous souls over the last three years.

I am curious. Ambitious. A lifelong learner.

And above all, I love the journey.

So - back to my niece’s question.

Is astrophotography hard?

Yes.

But if you’re willing to persevere, reflect, and keep going - it might just be one of the most rewarding things you ever do.

 

Over to You

Where are you on your astrophotography journey?
Which phase do you recognise yourself in?
And what’s the one thing you’re currently struggling with—or proud of?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

And PS:

Patrick, you know who you are, and if you happen upon this blog post, please get in touch so that I can credit you correctly and post details of your amazing astrophotography blog.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2026

 Another year under the stars

Loading and unloading equipment boxes into the car.  Setting up astrophotography rigs under winter skies so clear they feel almost fragile.  While fingers stiffen in the intense cold, my breathe will condense and then disappear in the dark, an ethereal vanishing fog. Beneath my feet, frost-hardened grass and frozen mud will crunch softly — a reminder that I am here, present, awake under the night sky.

This new year, I will once again, embark upon my stargazing night forays; not to escape the world, but to remember how truly vast the night sky is, and how impossibly small our planet becomes beneath it.  

Above me, stars will shine with quiet intensity and I will, once more, marvel about these photons of light reaching my eyes - ancient messengers that have travelled for millions, sometimes billions, of years. Light that began its journey before mountains rose, before continents split, before life stirred in primordial swamps. These tiny bursts of energy will have witnessed the rise and fall of entire worlds, and only now - on these nights - will they finally arrive, touching the back of my eyes. The same light once seen by our earliest ancestors, arriving from the farthest frontiers of an ever-expanding universe.

We call it starlight. Standing there, it will, again, feel like something more - like the universe reaching out from all directions at once, quietly reminding me: “you are part of this too.”

And so, I will step into another year - my fourth year following this learning journey through astronomy and astrophotography. Once again, I will stand beneath constellations that ancient civilizations traced into stories and maps of gods and heroes. This night, I will know them as vast stellar furnaces of hydrogen with new borne suns and spiral pillars of bright stars drifting in seas of dark matter.

Knowing this will not lessen their mystery for me. It will deepen it. Just as understanding the biology of a flower in my garden never steals the joy of its fragrance, so understanding the physics of the universe will only expand my sense of wonder. Knowledge does not replace awe - it gives it more room to breathe.

This year there will be more nights spent bathing in an ocean of photons - light arriving from inconceivable distances, from planets, moons, bright stars, glowing molecular clouds, and distant galaxies. Astronomy will once again teach me the same lesson: scale.

My life - a flicker in cosmic time - lived on a pale blue world orbiting an ordinary star. Yet under the night sky, I won’t feel small. I will feel expanded, as if the cosmos is lending me a fragment of its eternity simply for showing up and looking up.

I will once more plant my tripod in the dust of an anonymous car park, align my lens with Polaris and the steady rotation of the Earth, and breathe slowly. I will wait – patiently - for the invisible to reveal itself. Every exposure will become a quiet conversation between human patience and cosmic time. Perhaps this night it will be another softly glowing nebula - atoms colliding and collapsing, gravity shaping gas into form, the raw ingredients of future worlds quietly gathering.

It would be tempting to think that capturing these images means witnessing the universe building its future, light-year by light-year. But I will know that isn’t quite true. The photons I collect will carry messages from what was, not what will be. Every image will be a glimpse into the past - galaxies and stars as they once existed -  funnelled through lenses and sensors and processed here in the present moment.

And so, I will continue to return – more nights under the stars will follow.

I will return for the silence - not an empty silence, but a full one. A silence where my thoughts will settle gently, like dust on a mirror. A silence where the boundary between myself and everything beyond me will feel thin, almost permeable.

Under the stars, science will become personal and an exciting story once more. Philosophy will become a sky. And my heart will open just enough to hold two truths at once: the fragility of human life, and the quiet immortality of starlight.

Astronomers and astrophotographers will return to the darkness again and again over 2026 - not for the darkness itself, but for the infinite light it holds, patiently waiting to be seen.

I wish them all a Happy New Year and clear skies for the entire year, wherever in the world they may be!

Steve 

PS: 

Blogger isn't always the most intuitive platform to navigate - but it is free and simple to use and manage. 

To help you find information quickly on this blog, you can

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