How to Photograph the Night Sky | National Geographic

I'm Bubba Wallace and I am a NASCAR race car driver. Photography is a hobby that I love to do. Definitely a good counterbalance to the fast-paced life that I live. We are in Gooseberry Mesa, Utah, to capture some nighttime astrophotography with a new friend, Bob.

Back to Freshy, Bob Beck knows just about everything about the night sky. Deep sky photography is his thing. Meeting somebody who's so passionate about the night sky, like Bob, is very, very exciting to me. To prepare him for much more advanced photography, we're heading down this trail up on that hill, so we have a better panoramic view of the entire canyon.

Okay, all right, I'm following you then. [Music] I picked up a camera in 2010. It's been a lot of fun. Something that you can use as an escape and just brings you to another place, to not think about the madness or the chaos that you're going through on a race weekend. Getting that shot is just like racing; you have to be committed.

If you want to be a better night sky photographer, seek out adventures and go to some of the darkest places on the planet. Being out here with a guy like Bob, I'm going to expand my horizons so much more. This is a great scene. You're saying the North Star is gonna be here, so I think that'll be a good opportunity to get a star trail.

One of the shots that I've been really wanting to capture is a star trail that shows the Earth's rotation around a fixed star. Yeah, I also want to get a time-lapse shot, making sure my composition is right, the framing is right, getting the subject where I want it.

So you see, it's totally in darkness now at the beginning of the night, but as the moon dominates the nighttime environment, right, we will see it illuminating perfectly this rock formation.

Okay, awesome! Getting cold, yes. Sun's going down quick, so I say we gear up. Most people are not aware of the difference we have at night. As soon as the night starts, you realize it's a whole new world in temperature. I know it's going to get colder, especially when the sun goes down. It definitely cools down really quick, so you got to be prepared with the right gear.

The night sky has this uniting power because we all share one roof, and under this roof, we are all just one family. The same night sky is in everybody's backyard, and the show's community, which is what we need a lot in this nation right now.

These are, in fact, two of the real brightest stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Okay, they're not bright because they're close; they're far away, 500 to 800 light years away. You learn so much more hanging around Bob Beck. He knows everything about the night sky.

How big is the Milky Way? One side to the other side is 100,000 light years. Every single word that comes out of his mouth literally blows my mind, and each one light year is about 10 trillion kilometers. It's too much mass for me; it's a lot. All of them are moving at the same speed, circular speed, so it's 15 degrees per hour because it's depending on the Earth's rotation.

So we're faster. Race cars are faster. Race cars are approximately... yeah, one million times slower! Dang, I thought I was going fast. Patience is probably the biggest thing you learn in racing, and you see some parallels with photography.

I've been waiting for this moment. Dang, this thing is incredible! This really matters to a fraction of exposure, and I imagine that's the same in driving. It truly is; that's all we're fighting for. We're fighting for thousandths of an inch.

Yeah, one challenge with the 600 is how to find the object. Getting a true understanding of the night sky helps me hone in my craft. We purposely made it overexposed in order to see what is available in that part of the sky. Call them the golden numbers of night escape photography: so it's 6400, 2.8, 15 seconds, that's it.

Before, I was turning on my camera, getting the stars moving as a time-lapse and calling it a day. I'm shooting for that section down there. Yes, yes, that's what I got so far. Yes, good! There we go, yeah, wonderful!

Well, now it's looking for certain stars, looking for Polaris, looking for certain constellations. There it is! All right! Because I've really been grinding to push my photography to the next level, and pairing up with Bob, I feel like I've walked away with a notebook full of new ideas to try, so I'm ready to put them to use.

We can all share the same nighttime sky no matter where you're at in the world. It shows that we're all one; that's super cool. This has been a lot of fun; thank you. It's a good time on the way back home to give me some tips on driving.

Yeah, I think we could do that. [Music]