No spaceship needed: Taking close-ups of the stars

LOS ANGELES -- Most evenings, Brian Valente can be found outside his home here, staring up at the sky.

He's got his digital SLR connected to a slick 12-inch telescope to take long exposures of planets, stars and constellations. He's got his iPad 2 by his side, with the SkySafari app open, showing off augmented reality images of the solar system.

"I'm curious about the natural world," he says. "It's amazing to see how much stuff is actually out there. And you don't need a spaceship to see it."

Valente, 45, who works in the video business as co-founder of Redrock Micro, a company that makes cinema accessories, has been taking pictures of the stars for three years.

What began as a lark — capturing a picture of a nice sky — turned into an obsession that finds him spending many evenings behind his camera and telescope.

He's not alone.

Jerry Lodriguss quit his job as a photographer for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009 when sales of his books on astrophotography surpassed his journalism salary. He won't say how many books he's sold but says the books are how "I make my living."

Lodriguss runs the Astropix.com website, a resource for astrophotographers with oodles of images he's taken of the moon, Saturn, the Milky Way, stars and constellations.

"When you look into outer space, you're looking back in time," he says. "It's taken millions of years for some of these stars to travel. I never cease being amazed by it."

Digital technology, he says, has done wonders for making astrophotography easy and affordable, with few extra tools needed.

Because most of the readers of his Astropix.com website are photographers who are new to astrophotography, Lodriguss makes a point of shooting stars with cheap, consumer cameras.

His camera of choice is a Canon Rebel T2i, a digital SLR that can be found online for about $650. He also uses the cheap "kit" lens that comes with the camera, instead of the more expensive, fancy lenses that Canon targets to pros.

He's tried shooting the stars with point-and-shoot cameras, but he says they don't do the job well. Instead, he recommends using a digital SLR — even an entry-level model such as the Rebel.

Lodriguss' tips for starting out with astrophotography.

•Put the camera on a tripod to steady the image.

•Use a DSLR and try your hand at a wide-angle view of the sky. Lodriguss recommends setting the lens at its widest opening, around 3.5, and an ISO rating of 1,600.

•Don't shoot in auto mode. In manual mode, you'll be taking long exposures of the sky, around 20 or 30 seconds each. Most photos down here on the ground are usually taken ultrafast — at 1/60th of a second or 1/125th of a second.

•You'll need a shutter release for the long exposure, which plugs into the side of the camera. Decent releases start at about $15. For exposure, you'll need to put the camera dial on the B, or bulb, setting.

•Digital cameras have settings for color balance and are generally tuned to daylight. Lodriguss says to switch to the tungsten setting, which is for artificial lighting but works best with the sky and stars.

Wide shots will look best initially, Valente says, because when you start looking at the sky with a big telephoto lens at a slow exposure, you'll encounter visible streaks — from magnifying Earth's rotation.