NIGHTFRAME · by Cyrus Olinger
Shoot the sky.
Keep the wonder.
An independent field manual for astrophotography, built around decisions you make outside in the cold rather than specifications you read indoors. Free, no account, nothing tracked.
Tools, not just articles
Six things that
do the maths for you.
Everything here calculates live from your coordinates and your camera. Nothing is uploaded, no account exists, and there is no cookie banner because there are no cookies to consent to.
Tonight's sky
Enter your coordinates and get the darkness window, moon load, Milky Way core altitude and every target above the horizon, scored out of 100.
Open ↗Target atlas
Size, magnitude, position, best month and the focal length that actually frames each object. Filter by type, level, hemisphere or season.
Open ↗Field calculators
NPF shutter times, field of view against a real target, arcseconds per pixel, integration maths, dew margin, trail arcs and hyperfocal distance.
Open ↗Sky calendar
Every meteor peak with the moon phase calculated for that night, new-moon dark windows, and eclipses through 2028.
Open ↗Finding dark skies
What each Bortle class costs you photographically, how to find a site you will actually use on a weeknight, and how not to ruin it for everyone else.
Open ↗Glossary
Backfocus, walking noise, dithering, sampling, transparency. Plain language first, then what it means when it goes wrong.
Open ↗Learn by doing
Choose your next clear night.
Start with the photograph you want to make. The decisions that get you there follow from that, and almost nothing else does.
Build your first night-sky workflow
Get from a dark-sky plan to a clean first stack without drowning in gear arguments.
Follow this path ↗Know what rises, where, and when
Real darkness times, moon interference, target altitude and a field-ready shot plan.
Follow this path ↗Capture and process with intent
Exposure, tracking, calibration, stacking, colour and finishing that holds up.
Follow this path ↗Target dossiers
Start with a sky
that fits your frame.
Season, apparent size, focal length, integration, dynamic range, and the failure mode most likely to waste the night.
Open the target atlas ↗Target dossier · Beginner
Andromeda Galaxy field dossier
M31 · NGC 224. A practical galaxy plan for framing, capture, integration, and processing.
Open field note ↗Target dossier · Beginner
Orion Nebula field dossier
M42 · NGC 1976. A practical emission/reflection nebula plan for framing, capture, integration, and processing.
Open field note ↗Target dossier · Beginner
Pleiades field dossier
M45. A practical open cluster / reflection nebula plan for framing, capture, integration, and processing.
Open field note ↗Target dossier · Beginner
Lagoon and Trifid field dossier
M8 · M20. A practical emission/reflection nebulae plan for framing, capture, integration, and processing.
Open field note ↗The honest progression
The best rig is the one you can debug in the dark.
Add one dependency at a time, and finish a photograph at every step before you add the next one. Almost everyone gets this wrong in the same direction.
Build your gear path ↗Camera + support
Sharp stars and a complete frame
Stacking
More signal from what you own
Tracking
Longer exposures, new tradeoffs
Guiding + automation
Repeatable multi-hour sequences
Your next session starts here
What do you want
to shoot tonight?
Starting values, not commandments. Real conditions win every time.