You’ve got your portable astrophotography rig purchased and ready to take out for its first big night under the stars, and you’ve even got the perfect little field picked out, far from any pesky interference of city lights. But, there’s this sinking feeling in your chest as you begin to unfold your tripod and set your rig up, the same one you might have felt preparing for any big trip. That feeling as though you’ve forgotten something.
Your Go-bag. An essential of every astrophotography kit.
It’s too late to head back, and you can’t waste the precious nighttime hours anyways, so instead you compromise and spend the night ill-equipped for the weather and knowing that your photos would have turned out better had you remembered to pick up that piece of equipment you’d been needing. When the shoot is over and you pack up, you can’t help but to kick yourself, promising not to let it happen again. Being prepared is half the battle in astrophotography, and there’s no worse feeling than making the trip out to the dark and peaceful countryside and realizing that you forgot that essential piece to the night’s shoot.
Well, you’re in luck, because this is a checklist for every must have astrophotography accessory you need to have tucked away in your Go-bag to ensure a comfortable and productive night snapping images of your favorite celestial superstars, as well as some gear that you are sure to want in your trunk space. You might think some of the things on this list are overkill, but when the time comes, you’ll be glad you came prepared. Keep this checklist nearby for your next overnight trip, or modify it to fit the needs of your specific outing. In either case, you’re going to want a detailed and organized system to ensure that you’re prepared and not forgetting anything.
A Go-bag?
Just what it sounds like, a Go-bag is everything that you might need—on the go! A good Go-bag has plenty of room, keeps your gear safe, and is easy to keep organized and catalogued. For this reason, it’s recommended that your Go-bag be a hard-shell waterproof backpack. After all, what use is having all of your things if your bag lets in too much moisture during a surprise rainfall, or one of your extra lenses gets crushed on a particularly bumpy road? Protecting your gear should be your first priority when choosing a Go-bag, second only to your ability to secure it. Make sure the backpack you choose has proper shoulder straps that connect across your sternum, as well as a waist strap, all of which will help prevent any accidents as well as provide you balance as a tightly strapped backpack runs less risk of weight shift and an irksome fall.
But, once you have your go bag, what do you need to stock it with? And, you’re sure to have some extra space in your trunk and backseat, so what else should be on your checklist?
Tools and accessories
Sure, you have your rig, but there are some additional pieces of technical equipment that you will be sure to need:
- Backup Astrophotography Camera and Laptop: If you have a backup camera or laptop, make sure to pack them. There’s nothing worse than two of your most essential pieces of equipment breaking or experiencing some sort of temporary hardware problems while out in the field. Bringing an extra ensures that your shoot won’t be shut down early.
- Bahtinov Mask: A Bahtinov Mask is a tool that is placed overtop the Objective Lens of your telescope and helps you to achieve sharp focus in your images. It is an opaque disk with three slotted grids cut into it. By pointing a telescope outfitted with the mask at a bright star, you are able to use the grids to line up the diffraction spikes that it produces. Two of the diffraction spikes will form an ‘X’ shape, while the third rests in the middle. Adjusting the focus on your telescope will move the middle diffraction spike to the right or to the left of the X’s center point, and when you have the spike positioned directly center, you can be sure that you have perfect focus.
- Battery Backups: There are a number of components to your rig and equipment that require batteries, and as such you should always be prepared with backups in case one ends up drained. While your rig should be equipped with a power supply of some sort, some items, such as your DSLR or your flashlights might not be connected to said supply, and a backup battery can certainly be a lifesaver.
- Binoculars: A pair of binoculars can be very useful in helping you orient yourself as you set up your rig, whether this is helping to find the celestial pole, or the target you wish to photograph. A handy pair of binoculars are a useful aid on top of having your guide scope.
- Computer Box: A simple plywood construction, a computer box is a nice protective casing that sits over your laptop. Although you certainly checked the forecast for the night, weather has a habit of unleashing less than pleasant surprises, and should you be met with a sudden bit of rain, snow, or other moisture, a computer box can provide an extra layer of protection so that your laptop is not directly exposed to the elements.
- Dew Heater/Shield: As your telescope often operates at a higher temperature than the surrounding air, condensation is something that astrophotographers need to be ready to counter. A Dew Heater is an electrically heated band that wraps around your telescope’s objective lens and heats them above the temperature at which dew forms, keeping your lens dry and clear. Alternatively, there are also Dew Shields, which provide protection of your objective lens and slow the buildup of condensation.
- Dust Removal Tool: A simple air blowing bulb is a handy tool to help keep your lenses clean. A squeezable ball pushes air through a nozzle that allows for a direct and precise cleaning tool that won’t scratch your lenses or filters in a way that some other chemically based and abrasive cleaners might.
- Extra Memory Cards: Having a couple of extra memory cards for your DSLR, or an extra external hard drive will prevent you from slowing your shoot down, or halting it altogether, if you find yourself short on memory space.
- Folding Table: A simple folding table will provide a suitable work space on which to set up your laptop and other supplies for quickly organized use. You want to find a folding table that locks into place, and it would be a good idea to bring along extra wedges or blocks in order to properly balance the table against any uneven ground surfaces.
- Lenses: Having an arsenal of lenses at your disposal can help you frame specific types of shots. While you should have a good idea about the type of composition you are aiming for ahead of your shoot, in never hurts to have a fallback supply of lenses should your composition not work out the way you planned. In deciding on a lens, you want to center your attention to the focal length, speed, aperture, as well as the field of view. In addition to the standard 50mm lens that comes with most cameras, there are three other types of lenses you should have: a wide-angle 18-55mm, a short telephoto 85mm, and a long telephoto 200mm. Additional lenses provide you with more options regarding your photos final composition, and it never hurts to experiment if you are unsure of what composition you are aiming for.
- Lens Pen: A Lens Pen is a two-sided tool used for cleaning and maintaining the surface of your lenses and filters. One side is equipped with a very soft brush, which typically retracts into the pen to prevent fraying and abrasion of the bristles, and is used for removing dust and particles from your lens. The second side is equipped with a liquid free cleaning tip and is used to remove blemishes and smudges from your lens. If any grime remains, you can utilize isopropyl alcohol based cleaners to supplement the Lens Pen.
- LRGB Lens Filter Set: An array of lens filters can accomplish a lot for your photos in regards to drawing out colors and suppressing light pollution. An LRGB Lens Filter set allows you to take a range of photos with different filters in place to highlight contrast and detail under specific light wavelengths, and these images are later compiled during post production. The ‘L’, or Luminance Filter, lets in much more light than the rest of the set’s filters, solidifying the details of an object. Then, by using the remaining Red, Green, and Blue Light Filters, you can provide your images with color.
- Observing Pier: Homemade observing piers are constructions that provide a flat and stable base on which to set your rig up. They can be as simple as a square board or piece of plywood, outfitted with short height adjustable legs, such as refrigerator footings. Observation piers are especially useful in fields, when the ground might be uneven or even a bit muddy. It would be wise to bring additional wedges or blocks in order to have greater control over the levelness and stability of your pier.
- Red Light Headlamp: Of course, you need to be able to see your workspace and equipment throughout a night shoot, but traditional flashlights keep your hands busied and can work to over saturate both your vision and telescope with unnecessary light, disrupting your shooting area. A Red Light Headlamp will keep your hands free while ensuring that both your eyes and telescope remain perfectly adjusted to the night sky.
- Remote Shutter Release: A Remote Shutter Release is a very useful tool that allows you more mobility and freedom in your shoots, as well as presents the opportunity for some really cool terrestrial compositions. As the name implies, this device allows you to snap photographs while away from your telescope. Aside from the mobility, using a Remote Shutter release makes it so that you don’t have to touch your rig to snap the photo, and risk moving your optical lens and ruining the hard work you put into getting everything lined up and into focus. It also allows you to lock your shutter open for extended long exposures and star trail photos, and can even allow you to enter the frame and snap a nice terrestrial shot that features you, or rather your silhouette, gazing up at the stars.
- Spare USB Cables: Just as with the need for spare batteries, your rig needs to stay connected so it can relay information back and forth to your laptop. The worst part is that cables can sometimes break underneath the protective coating, and you might not realize one isn’t working until you go to plug it in. A lot can go wrong if a USB cable happens to break that can disrupt your shoot, such as losing connectivity to your Autoguider, or between your rig and your power supply. Extra cables allow you an added layer of security if one happens to stop working.
Comfort and Safety
While you need to make sure you need to have everything to support your rig, it is sometimes hard to remember that in a large sense you are part of your rig and operation as well. As such, you need to remember to bring accessories that will keep you comfortable and eager to continue a long shoot, which can easily lean into twelve hours including set up and break down.
- Bug Spray: Just because its nighttime, doesn’t mean that bugs are sleeping. Having to constantly swat at these pesky creatures to keep them away from your equipment’s lights, away from your lenses, and away from feasting on yourself can be incredibly draining of motivation. Keep a can of bug spray on hand, to thwart any adventurous pests.
- Change of Clothes: Not only are extra clothes important so that you can dress in layers and adapt to changing temperatures, it’s also important as a night’s buildup of dew can easily soak through to your socks and pants. And that’s not even mentioning any possibility of muddy fields that you certainly wouldn’t want to track into your vehicle should you take a spill. Keep yourself clean and dry by always having an extra pair of clothes.
- Compass: A compass can be very useful in helping find the celestial pole, which is in relative distance to magnetic north. While there is no substitute to first finding Polaris or the Southern Cross, sometimes they aren’t always visible. For those moments, or especially when you begin setting up your rig in the daytime hours, a compass can be a handy tool to save you some time.
- First Aid Kit: Often, when you’re out on a shoot, you might be a good distance away from the nearest town or city. Should an accident occur, a first aid kit can help dress a wound until you can make it back to town. Or, they can keep you rolling until your shoot is complete. You never know what will happen on a shoot, and if you’re away from civilization it is also a good idea to keep a copy of emergency contacts in your back pocket should you somehow be separated from your cell phone.
- Hand Warmers: It can get cold on those night time shoots, and your hands will be of little service to you if they’re constantly shivering. A pack of hand warmers can help keep your hands stable and keep you warm, in addition to your layered outfits.
- Lawn Chair: You don’t plan on standing throughout the length of your shoot, do you? A sturdy and comfortable lawn chair can help keep your endurance up throughout the night, especially when the opportunity presents itself during long exposures. Sit back with your remote timer, let your equipment do the work when it can, and enjoy the view.
- Food and Water: Having an ample supply of snacks can help keep your energy up, and keep you motivated and nourished during a shoot. It is also a good idea to bring more food than you might need, in the case of any unfortunate happenings. The same goes for water. It’s a good idea to have at least a gallon of water with you on any overnight trip, in addition to whatever your beverage of choice is. Always plan for the unexpected.
- Thermos: There’s no better way to keep yourself warm and energized than with a thermos of coffee or hot tea. Nights in the field can be long and cold, and a thermos of your favorite beverage can do a lot to keep you comfortable. Remember, you’re not only working, you’re relaxing and enjoying yourself.
- Touch Sensitive Gloves: A pair of gloves seems like a no brainer when preparing for a long shoot, but if you planned on just bringing along a pair of mittens or winter gloves, you might find yourself frustrated. You will be handling a lot of sensitive equipment, and there’s a good chance you will need your phone or other touch screen devices. A nice pair of touch sensitive gloves can help you handle your gear with delicacy, and without having to remove them every couple of minutes. It is also nice to have gloves that have a little bit of grip to them, just for the extra security of preventing any lens or eyepiece drops.
- Towels: A towel is about the most massively important thing an astrophographer can have (wink wink). Well, that might be overstating it, but having a supply of extra towels will certainly be of use. A couple of extra towels can help you mop up some condensation that builds up throughout the night, and any spills that happen. They can also be useful for padding your knees as you set up your equipment, and for lining your table and Observation Pier to provide a soft landing surface and to make sure that nothing rolls away from you.
