new Milky Way and Antares Astrophotography

[Aloicious]

I got out late last night and got some more astrophotography, I drove a little further this time to get to a darker area. this was shot in a grey section of the light pollution map (meaning it was really dark, closest man made lights other than a couple cars was over 5 miles away, and the nearest 'town' was over 40 miles away)

this first one is of the same area of the sky I shot last time I was out, its the southern portion of the milky way when viewed in the northern hemisphere. below it I've labeled the landmarks incase you're not familiar with astronomy.

this is a stack of ~35ish exposures, each of ~13-20sec, varied Fstop between 1.8-3.2, all taken with my D90 and 50mm 1.8 lens. 400-1600 ISO (mostly 800)

the next pic doesn't have as many cool landmarks, but its Antares, a red supergiant star, the 16th brightest star in the night sky, and part of the Scorpius constellation, I've also made a second pic with labels, probably didn't need to on this one...

this is a stack of 5-6 exposures, each of 13-15sec, f1.8-2.2, also taken with my D90 and 50mm 1.8 lens. 800 ISO

and last is one that was actually an accidental picture. I wasn't really meaning to take this one, but it came out kinda neat with the telephone poles in front of the milky way, that bright cluster of stars is M7, its labeled on the picture up above.

single shot, 15s, f2.0, 50mm prime, ISO800, also with my D90 and 50mm 1.8 lens

all the shots were taken between 1:50am and 3:00am MST 6-10-11...

they're a little better than my last ones, still need to work on a little bit, the top pic has a missing portion in the top right area, thats because I didn't get enough outer shots in the stack, I'll have to get a better range of shots next time.

any C&C or anything is welcome.

 

[06azrex]

great looking photos. Always wanted to try this but I would have to drive a considerable distance to find somewhere that would be dark enough.

 

[Aloicious]

Thanks, if you're down in AZ, you can get to some pretty dark spots if you drive to the northern part of the state, here's a light pollution map you can scroll around and see where you're at:
Dark Sky Finder

I was out a little south of the bonneville salt flats area when I took the pics above. about 70 miles away from my house, so not too far.

I need to get a more portable telescope with good tracking, my current one is HUGE and doesn't track at all, so it hard to shoot anything but the moon with it.

 

[480sparky]

Hey! I can see Brian Dennehy!

 

[Miladymimi]

I would love to try this. I live way out in the country, out here when it's dark, it's dark! Can you give me details of how you did this, or do you know of a site that explains the process. Thank you. The pictures are great.

 

[480sparky]

I would love to try this. I live way out in the country, out here when it's dark, it's dark! Can you give me details of how you did this, or do you know of a site that explains the process. Thank you. The pictures are great.

Try herehttp://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/articles-interest/136541-astrophotography-how-guide-part-i.html, here, here and herehttp://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/articles-interest/136546-astrophotography-how-guide-part-iv.html.

 

[Miladymimi]

Thank you, much appreciated.

 

[Aloicious]

Thanks Miladymimi...yeah, those are pretty good writeups that sparky referenced, but IME you really don't NEED a tracking mount if you're doing wide angle astrophotography if its sufficiently dark. all those shots above were taken on a regular $30 stationary tripod, but if you don't have a tracking mount you'll be limited to the exposure time without getting star trails. when I'm shooting with my 35mm lens I can squeeze about 25s exposures without tracking, with my 50mm, its more like 15-20s...you can build a cheap tracking device and get ~5minute exposures, and if you have a good quality tracking unit that does both declination and right ascension, then its pretty much the sky is the limit at most focal lengths...if you are doing anything telephoto or telescopic, then the only thing you can really shoot without tracking is the moon. its all about getting the most light from your subject through the lens. and with astrophotography alot of that light isn't visable to the naked eye, so you need the long exposures, and stacking and such to maximize the light in the image. there is also alot of post processing work that goes into it because now instead of 1 exposure for a single image, you might have 30+ exposures that need processing before they get stacked together, and then some more processing after the full image is compiled.

part of the issue is actually FINDING what you want to shoot, which can be difficult if you're not fluent in astronomy (which I'm not, its taken a while for me to find specific things and I'm still not great at it)...get a star map and familiarize yourself with what you're looking for. here is a good place to download free ones:
Skymaps.com - Publication Quality Sky Maps & Star Charts

but the best advice I can give you is to just get out there and try it, you'll be able to see more stuff in your images than you will just looking up, so don't be afraid to start shooting and see what shows up, its kinda fun to discover something in an image and then identify it, thats what happened the first time I got a picture of the pipe nebula here:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-gallery/243347-milky-way-wide-angle-astrophotography.html

you're welcome to ask questions too, I don't mind, if I can help out I will.

 

[Miladymimi]

Thanks Aloicious, the next new moon I'm going to give this a try. We can see the milky way pretty clearly most of the time and tons of stars. Sometimes I like to sit outside and just watch the sky at night, especially during a meteor shower. It's quiet and peaceful. My 7 year old grandson will sometimes come and sit in my lap and we'll watch the sky together. It's fun, until the coyotes start to sing, then he's ready to go back inside.

 

[Aloicious]

nice, post up your pics when you give it a try!

 

[nabilishes]

@Aloicious when you stack your photos, how did you get the nebula stars (for eg.M20) to allign with the rest of the pictures on the stack. Or did you just stack without aligning the stars?

 

[Aloicious]

wow, old thread. when I stacked them I had photoshop align them all together for each stack, it did pretty well. then with each stack of images, I stitched them together like a panorama in PS. I could have done it better, this was an early attempt at astrophotography of mine, you can see some differences between stitched photos, as well as the fact that I'm missing the starts in the top right corner from not planning the stitch better while I was out in the field taking shots..

you'll have to align the stacks though, otherwise it won't work correctly.

 

[manyvan2000]

I envy you. I haven't seen any stars since I moved to Delaware. It is always cloudy!!! Nice captures, by the way.