 This video is sponsored by Brilliant.org. Hey, Nico here. I'm an astrophotographer who's been active in giving advice online about astrophotography for a number of years now, so I thought it might be fun to break down some of the things that I hear often about astrophotography that I think are either just not true or at least misguided. But with each myth, I'm going to try to explain where I think these ideas come from before debunking them. Okay, myth number one. You have to be rich. So I understand completely where this myth comes from because a lot of the equipment you can go buy for astrophotography is expensive. You know, I talk about mounts and cameras and telescopes that can quickly add up to thousands of dollars right here on this channel. But I also pride myself on talking about ways to get started that are low cost, like if you or someone you know has a DSLR or even a smartphone, you can get started with several astrophotography projects with those, many of which I've shown how to do right here on YouTube for completely free. Another way to get started in astronomy and astrophotography that I think is overlooked a lot, but it's great is and it's low cost is to join an astronomy club. Every club that I've joined here in the US has been around $30 a year. So that's like what, two months of Netflix for a whole year of astronomy. And these clubs almost always have a lending library of telescopes and gear that you can get trained on. Many also have observatories with, you know, great big telescopes that you can use. So go Google your city name plus the phrase astronomy club and get involved with your local club, because you definitely don't have to be rich to get started that way. Okay, myth number two, there's nothing new to find out there. And this one usually goes with along with someone saying something like, Oh, astrophotography is boring, you're all just shooting the same thing, or NASA's done it better, and things like that. This one though is interesting to me, because I have found it's not well known outside of the astrophotography community that amateurs are discovering stuff all the time. To name just one team, Marcel Dreschler and Xavier Strottner have discovered over 100 planetary nebulae in just the past few years. And then along with Jan Santy, they recently discovered that huge O3 arc near the Andromeda galaxy. Well, to name someone else, Bray Falls here on YouTube recently discovered a cool nebula that he named the kyber crystal nebula. So the gear, the software, the knowledge now, it's so good that I think we're just getting started with a huge explosion of amateur discoveries. I mean, there's already been tons since the digital era, but like, I think we're going to see even more every year. Now I want to be clear that I'm not saying you have to discover something to make astrophotography worth your time. Of course, that's not my opinion astrophotography is a rewarding hobby to many without trying to get famous or pursue, you know, science. What I think is so interesting about it is that it sits at this very unique intersection of being both a very technical hobby and a very creative one. And for certain people out there, myself included, there's just nothing better than that. Okay, myth number three, don't buy a doublet. I covered this one in my last video where I showed a or two videos ago, maybe, where I showed a doublet with ED glass and a field flatener can hold up very well against a triplet or even an astrograph. But this myth is actually a whole category of well meaning advice online that can be unhelpful because I think often the advice giver assumes that the person that they're talking to online is exactly like them when really they might have completely different goals and completely different ideas for what looks good or acceptable in a photograph. So the average astrophotographer in my opinion probably doesn't care so much about the spot sizes on the stars if they're just slightly better or worse with this scope versus one that costs five times as much. But I totally get that people can get very passionate about these kinds of details. My issue with it is I think people really start believing that they can just go buy a super expensive telescope and that's going to instantly make their pictures better. When the truth is your sky conditions and your skill in processing are way up here and the difference between an $800 telescope and a $5,000 telescope are way down here in terms of how much these things really matter to the final result. Okay, myth number four, light pollution filters don't work. Again, I can see where this one came from where it started. Light pollution filters work well when dealing with emission nebulae. How? The exact same way that narrowband filters or dual band filters work well with emission nebulae. They pass the light from the nebula and they block the light from terrestrial sources of light and this helps improve contrast. Will a light pollution filter be as effective as a narrowband filter or a dual band filter? No. Does that mean they don't work? Of course not. So to me, this should not be controversial. Where it does get confusing is people start making claims about light pollution filters working well with broadband targets like star clusters, reflection nebulae, and galaxies. And the reason that I've never covered that on my channel is in all my testing, light pollution filters on broadband targets is a total mixed bag. And personally, I think they're more of a hindrance than a help. So I do think it is not helpful that many filter manufacturers are suggesting light pollution filters can work wonders with galaxies and reflection nebulae because they're really good on emission nebulae, really so-so on anything else. So that's to sum up my position. Light pollution filters do work even with stock cameras if your goal is to capture emission nebulae, just not as effectively as the more expensive narrowband and dual band filters. But there are tradeoffs with those filters too, the main one being that they're a lot more expensive than a light pollution filter. Okay, myth number five. Everyone should aim for one arc second per pixel. Okay, first off, I know this is a little bit nerdy and so if you've never dived into the concept of sampling and how it relates to astrophotography, I apologize ahead of time that this is probably going to get confusing. I still do want to do an explainer video on this, but it just hasn't worked out yet. So first off, I have no issue with one arc second per pixel being this somewhat arbitrary but agreed upon point where we move from undersampled to oversampled because it's just a rule of thumb and an easy one to remember. Even if we all really know that it's a lot more complicated than that because you have blur from your local seeing conditions, you have the Dawes limit, you have all these things that are probably going to limit you before you can take advantage of really high resolution. What I don't like though about one arc second per pixel becoming so famous as a piece of advice for matching telescopes and cameras is that it's become this kind of dogma among advice givers, like it's the most important thing. When many of us would gladly trade a wider field of view for a slightly worse resolution on small details, but that's rarely how it's presented. I see people saying just if you want your images to look good you have to get one arc second per pixel and that's where I think all the confusion lies. I think we're mixing up subjective and objective measures because for me the goal of my astrophotography is not the crispiest details, but for many it is, so for them sampling is going to be a lot more important than it is for me. But like with a lot of my myths here the big takeaway is if you're an experienced astrophotographer who gives advice, try to meet beginners where they are. Ask them what their actual goals are in astrophotography. Figure out sort of what their budget is before giving them just these random bits of info that might not really apply to their specific situation. Okay hopefully that wasn't too soapboxy. I do like thinking about these things and getting some of these things off my chest once in a while and just exercising my mind in general and that brings me to the sponsor for this video Brilliant. Brilliant.org is the best way to learn science and math interactively in just a few minutes each day. There are thousands of lessons on everything from physics to calculus and there are new ones added every month. The course that I've been working on lately is called Knowledge and Uncertainty and it's my favorite kind of course because it teaches you deep things about how to think but it does so with these logic puzzles that are so much fun. So to try everything Brilliant has to offer completely free for a full 30 days visit Brilliant.org slash Nebula Photos or click on the link in the description. 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