>>3941715>how's the 16-55 for astro?Honestly, on fb group I'm in I've seen surprising amount of people using it for astro. Fast prime still would be better.
Of all lens makers samyang have carved themself a niche for making astro lenses. Their wide angles often have low coma (coma is a smearing of bright points of light on edges of frame).
However, you can do astro with much crapier lenses that that. Check you this guy:
https://www.instagram.com/marcinslipko_photo/He shots with lenses like ttaritsan 50 f1.2, viltrox 33 f1.4 and gets away with it, because those lenses at ~ f2 have low enough coma and vignetting, uses tracker for longer exposure and stitches photo to get wider field of view. So, if you have good understanding of what you are doing then you can get away with a lot.
>and do I need an nd filter?Fuck no! Nd filter makes you lose light for weird colors on your photos. Worst trade off ever for astro. You can get some interesting stuff with circular polarisers, but overall you really don't need filters for your astro.
>where do I startYou need good location and good timing. Both of those are much, much more important than gear. Location means place with low light pollution. You can check it on your light pollution map. Car will be very helpful to travel there. It would be helpful to travel to location where big sources of light would be sort of "behind your back" to portion of sky you are interested in.
And how do you know on which portion of sky you are interested in? And at what time you should go? You can install app like SkySafari to get location of astronomical objects (like milky way) in real time as well as in advance. Moreover, if you are in dark enough area, you can see milky way with your own eyes. No, it will not look like on photos ; P
