 In this video I'm going to share four awesome objects in the night sky to try photographing untracked, meaning just a camera on a fixed tripod like this. And why four? Well, one for each season of the year. And this is actually something that I love about astrophotography, is how closely it's tied to the seasons. It's just really cool to think about us traveling around the sun on our spaceship Earth with a different view onto the universe depending on which part of the orbit we're in. Now, of course there are also differences on what you'll see in the night sky depending on where exactly on Earth you live. And so keep in mind for this video I'm sharing my experience and I live in the Northern Hemisphere at around 42 degrees north of the equator. After a bit more research into this maybe I'll make a part two for Southern Hemisphere folks. Anyways, let's dive in and let's start with summer as we're right in the middle of it right now. And my suggestion for the middle of summer is the constellation Cygnus. And there are a few reasons. Number one, it'll be up most of the night. Number two, of all the constellations it's the one that's most jam-packed full of large interesting nebulae like the North America and Pelican which are just east of the bright star Deneb and the Cedar butterfly just off the bright star Cedar. And it does help to have a modified camera to pick these nebulae up because they're mostly hydrogen. But even if you don't pick the nebula up you know really well it's still an interesting constellation to photograph because it's one of the few constellations that I think really looks like its namesake Cygnus being Latin for swan. And I can always really imagine the long outstretched wings and the long neck when I'm looking at it either in the night sky or in a photograph. In the late summer but especially in the autumn is when I turn to the Andromeda Galaxy. And other than the Magellanic clouds which are are only visible in the southern hemisphere Andromeda is the largest galaxy in terms of angular diameter in the night sky. It's over three degrees across which means it would be like six full moons across. The tricky part even though it's big is that Andromeda is very bright in the core and much fainter in the spiral arms where the hotter blue stars live. It also takes a bit of practice with Andromeda to actually find the galaxy because it's not particularly close to any really bright stars. But if you make an imaginary line from Mirac which is one of the brightest stars in Andromeda constellation through Mu Andromeda this will this will lead you to the galaxy. If you don't mind the cold weather the winter is actually a great time for astrophotography is we usually get excellent transparency and the nights are quite a bit longer giving us more time to set up and under the stars and take our photos. And it also gives us the return of one of the best constellations for astrophotographers which is Orion home to the Orion Nebula but also many other beautiful nebulae and just like Cygnus the constellation of Orion as a whole makes a great photo. Here's one I took this was even without a tripod I just had the camera and lens propped up on the ground with some rocks at a dark site and that huge red nebula is called Barnard's Loop. My choice for spring is the Milky Way core area with many beautiful bright nebulae such as the Lagoon and Triffid. And this might ruffle some feathers as typically astrophotographers call spring galaxy season due to all the galaxies that are only visible in the spring. But the thing is I can't think of any of these galaxies in the spring that really make a good choice to shoot on tract just on a tripod. So instead I'd suggest just staying up late to shoot the Milky Way. I've shot it as early as March in the early morning hours but by April and May it becomes much more approachable as the core starts rising earlier and earlier in the night. And if you successfully shot Andromeda Galaxy and the Orion Nebula I think the Lagoon Nebula should be the third on your list whether it's spring or summer as it's relatively easy to find in the constellation Sagittarius and it's nice and bright and it even comes with a companion in the Triffid Nebula. Just to show you how bright this area of sky is here is a single untracked 1.3 second exposure at ISO 6400 and 200 millimeter focal length. And of course it's a bit noisy but stacking a few hundred photos together will take care of that and you can clearly see that there's lots of nice detail here. So to wrap up my pics are Cygnus in the summer and Andromeda in the autumn, Orion in the winter, and Sagittarius in the spring. And all of these are approachable untracked at a wide variety of focal lengths from wide angle to more telephoto. I hope you enjoyed the latest edition of this five-minute Friday. It's been Nico Carver at NebulaPhotos.com. Clear skies!