susan-parker

I hand held the camera above my head, placed against a window frame. Then take multiple shots on tip-toes trying not to breath too much. It mostly works (but not always), either because my hands slip or shake a bit, or a train is going passed. A tripod would be better, but the opening in the window is high up and not very large, and my current tripod can't be placed to be used as the angle of the legs won't work. I can remove a number of boxes from the window ledge, and setup something with a tracking mount; but that is for a proper session which takes time to set up, conduct, and clear away. However these images are moments of oppertunity as in I look out of the window later on at night and if I see a chance of an image I take as many pictures as possible whilst my partner is brushing their teath!

From the 15th May (at 21:55 GMT), stars below Libra. Spica middle top, y-Hydra middle bottom, and Kraz (from Corvus) bottom left. Stack of 9 shots... hand held. Colours are "interesting" from the Bayer interpolation and levels boosting. Two images: full frame scaled to 1800 pix wide, and a 1to1 pixel crop from the centre of the original frame (63 Virgo, 61 Virgo, and HIP 65183 making a triangle in the center); plus full frame 16bpc TIFF file. Processed in Photoshop. Each pixel is c. 12 arc-seconds. Stars visable down to magnitude 10. Nikon D800 with Nikkor 85mm f/2.0 at f/2.8, 9 x 2.5 seconds, ISO 800. IDAS D1. 180515-stack9frames-Spica+y-Hydra+Kraz-stars-1c.tif

Ah, okay I will see how creative I can be As to magnitude; the issue is that there is significant background, so I rapidly hit a photon-wall! Attached is one of the four "as shot" (but JPEG'ed) frames.

WOW, that is awesome. I can't imagine where you got all that colour information from, particually as it's a JPEG!!! Very happy for your enhancment. Where do I find a "star colour hammer"? The view with the 85mm is 24x16 degrees, on the FX D800 sensor giving a nominal pixel size of 12 arc-seconds. However that is the RGGB bayer, and all that so pragmatically the smallest is more like 24... and then with all the atmospherics at least double that and then add a bit more! I have a few more images... this was one of the better ones and taken a few nights ago. Main thing is that in all my images I see a very sharp cut-off for magnitude. If I poke around in the above for example I can discern a few into the 10s, but that's it. The background "noise" is significant, even with stacking, DSLR sensor noise reduction, and DxO Prime NR. The best I have got is magnitude 14, with my 500mm f/8 Tamron mirror lens and a stack of seven 15 second tracking shots (longest exposure I could do before the stars started to trail). My images are semi-opertunity since I only have a small view south from a window. Nowhere local to set up although I have plans/hopes to get a bit away from London sometime and see some real stars I am having a go at uploading the full TIFF file... it's taking a while 180507-Spica-in-Virgo-mag10-4-stack-DSC_2829_32-full-1.tif

Many thanks I am new to the astro bit of photography, only been experimenting since this January 2018. I have "a few" manual Nikkor lenses from "back in the day" when my film camera was a Nikkormat FTn (and then a F2 Photomic from my step-father). Having taken a few shots of the moon now and again I decided to have a go at some longer exposures... and to my great surprise found that I was getting sometimes up into the thousand+ number of stars - which is a thing as here in West London as one can only see a dozen or so on a good night, usually less. Still experimenting with how to process. The only "special" thing with the image is that I did use a IDAS-D1 Light Pollution Suppression Filter (a FLO special offer), otherwise it's straight forward photo equipment. I hadn't realised about this thread being for tracking... I interpreted no-EQ as static

From the 7th May 2018, just before midnight so astronomical dark (except for the West London H&F light pollution haze - so it's never properly dark). Bottom part of the constellation Virgo, the bright star to the right side of the image is Spica; see UniMap ID image. Visible in the original 50MB TIFF image are Stars down to the magnitude 10 range. Hand held, against a window frame (2 second Mirror Up before shot timer). Nikon D800 with Nikkor 85mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.8, 4 off 2.5 seconds exposures, ISO800; IDAS-D1 Light Pollution Suppression Filter. Processed with DxO PhotoLab, Deep Sky Stacker & Photoshop.