Wide Field Cygnus-ish from last night

[SteveL]

Just thought I`d try this last night.... (please ignore the low flying house in the image)

Canon 350D (unmodded), piggybacked on my NS8GPS

Unguided

13 x 60s @ ISO800, 5 Bias, 5 Darks

Stacked: DSS

Tweak: Photoshop CS, overprocessed almost totally to death with NoelC's Tools, but I dont care!

(Note: The sky was starting to lighten quickly towards the lower-left of the image)

And for reference, from Starry Night:

First time I have done this... I`m amazed at the detail! I`ll be doing this more often i think...... I need longer subs ... again...

[geppetto]

Wowsers Steve but that's a lovely image...

Sign of the summer skies to come.

Bet your very pleased with that one 8)

[SteveL]

I'd be more pleased if I had started it earlier in the night (when it was dark) and had longer subs, but as a first time effort, I`m chuffed as hell

[Cloudwatcher]

Really great. Widefield shots are my favorite. Just waiting for weather to improve so I can get out there. Might have a long wait.

Thanks for sharing

CW

[Robd]

Nice one Steve.

What lens did you use? Looks wide to me (28mm?)

[SteveL]

I think it was 18mm on my 18-50mm zoom lens... but not sure :shock:

[MikeD]

Fantastic result. now wishing I had a DSLR too.

[Helen]

Great image Steve. I'm going green here - I've got a Canon DSLR too but no sky!!

Helen

[russ]

Excellent shot Steve......just gotta love those widefield milkyway images.

No point in owning a DSLR if you don't take a shot of the milkyway.

Russ

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

That's just ace Steve. Well worth doing by the looks of it.

What's your sky like, only the house suggests possible streetlighting like I have.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[SteveL]

I`m quite fortunate with light pollution, or at least I think I am. I try to judge my sky mag using Ursa Minor, and its almost always ~4 and sometimes even 5-ish (borderline averted vision). To my south I have effectivly a house (neighbour), one very small road, another house, and then 10-15 miles of empty Cambridgeshire countryside until you get to Royston. East is blocked by the house, but that also blocks the direct LP from the street lamps. West I have a view down to about 15-20 degrees (apart from one house roof that just hid the moon last night). North is about the same as east... maybe the rooftops are a little higher.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

I'll not bother doing that then.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[barkis]

You have done a great piece of work there Steve. I'ts nice to see a wide field

Milky Way exposure, and what a great Idea supplementing it with a reference pic from SN.

I used to so enjoy coloured slide shows of scenes like these during Astronomy Society evenings. They always impressed me more than the higher mag ones.

It would be great to use Microsoft Power Point and make a slide show of images like these and play them out on a digital projector. Wow.

Ron.

[Caz]

I`m chuffed as hell

I bet you are, that's a fine image... 8)

The trackings out on the house though

Caz

[SteveL]

The house is AltAz

[Doc]

Mighty Impressive.

Amazing how much detail you have picked out.

Mick

[SteveL]

Doc - Thank you....

KK - here is a single raw image from this (60 second sub, scaled down from RAW/LArge size of 3456x2304)... how the light pollution compared to yours? Its hard to tell without anyone else's images/experiences to compare against.

As I said in my original post, very very over processed to get the detail out.

[CELESCOPE]

welldone Steve thats a lovely image , great detail coming through , but like you said , longer subs , with that set up 2 mins no prob mate GO FOR IT

Rog

[SteveL]

its the first thing to do on my list... just as soon as the bl__dy clouds go away again.

[Martin 2]

Thats a cracker, what a nice pic, you could stare up at that all night, its a shame that many people dont get the chance because of city lights

M2

[maroon bells]

That's very nice, i like that, something different.

There seems to be no stopping you.

[SteveL]

Shooting this image, with now real idea what it would come out like, and then seeing it appear while I was processing it has made me sit back and think about the whole ethos of "I need more magnification, I want the objects to be HUGE"... I can see a huge wide field montage of the sky being on my agenda when the nights get longer/darker.

[jonifive]

Quite amazing how much detail you have captured in that image, makes me wish my eyesight was better!

Very impressive.

J

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Shooting this image, with now real idea what it would come out like, and then seeing it appear while I was processing it has made me sit back and think about the whole ethos of "I need more magnification, I want the objects to be HUGE"... I can see a huge wide field montage of the sky being on my agenda when the nights get longer/darker.

I found the image scale to be an issue recently when I realised the huge size of some of the stuff up there when you are imaging them. I used a 135mm camera lens with my SC3 webcam to good effect last year and that wasn't wide enough to get the north american nebula in the frame. A lot of the intereesting stuff is very large if you consider a webcam view is similar to a 6mm EP, and a serious CCD is only a little better at 12mm or thereabouts. The big widefield Cygnus/Barnards loop type stuff need a massive widefield that is very difficult to get through a 'scope. I really know what you mean Steve, there's more than one way to approach this astrophotography thing, and the widefield is easier on the trackng requirements.

Kaptain klevtsov

[zhgutas]

Is it still not to late to say this is awesome?