Capturing the milkyway..

[Neeken]

Is 50mm wide enough? As the only wide lens I have is the kit lens, which isn't that good obviously.

Also, how dark of a sky do I need to be able to capture it? I live in a small town, a few km outside of the city. If I go down to a friend of mine, the sky is pretty dark straight up.. However, street lights and houses about 1km away affect the horizon quite a lot. Sounds strange to say the horizon when I said 1km, but you probably know what I mean..

I understand that it's not ideal at all, but just wondering if it's plausible. I was able to capture the orion nebula there with almost a full moon, but I have a feeling that's probably easier to achieve?

[Neeken]

milky way* ><

[Capricorn]

Cannot locate it at the moment but I have seen a couple of good shots of the milky way from a camera and lens. Somewhere on CN. From memory they didn't use a lens as wide as 50mm so yours should be OK. I also think that the image I saw was on a stationary tripod ansd a 20 or 30 second exposure. Short enough that rotation was not apparent.

Obviously the darker the better.

It will be a DSLR so just give it a go, you can always just delete any that don't turn out as good as you want.

[Scott]

this was taken with a 18-55mm canon lens @18mm. it was in the suburbs in australia although you could see it naked eye. if 50mm doesn't catch enough you could try doing a mosaic

Hope this helps

Scott

[Neeken]

Thanks. I've never seen it with the naked eye before, so maybe it's not dark enough. Oh well, guess I'll just try next time I'm able to.

[harleygirl]

Was that just one shot?

[JamesF]

I used the kit Canon 18-55mm lens for a wide field shot of the Milky Way through Cygnus last year. One of the first times I'd actually tried wide field at all, in fact. It came out ok. The shot has its faults, but we all have to start somewhere.

Here you go:

http://www.tanstaafl.co.uk/2012/08/another-attempt-at-a-cygnus-widefield-image/

James

[Ulysses]

Hi. I use a Canon 50mm f/1.8. You do get aberrations with the lens wide open, but that's the trade off if you want to pick up Milky Way nebulosity with a fixed tripod shot. The Images taken in my 'Mozambique 2010' folder on my website show what you can achieve with a fixed tripod though. I took about 50x8 sec exposures for each of the images and stacked them in DeepSkyStacker. They were then processed in Photoshop. This captures the Milky Way effectively, although they aren't very wide field! Paul

[kabeza]

Ulysses

I was going to ask the same and found your thread

You took 50 shots 8" each and stacked with DSS, right?. Lemme ask you some qs

- Which ISO you used? 1600? more?

- Did you use only light frames? Didn't you shoot dark, bias, etc. type?

- And finally, did you shot having a motorized mount or similar? What did you do for earth's rotation?

Thanks a lot

[Scott]

Was that just one shot?

Hi Harleygirl, it was about 30 or so subs of around 10 or 20 secs with dark frames.

hth

Scott

[Ulysses]

Hi, as far as I remember, they were either ISO 800 or 1600. I did shoot a few darks to create a master dark frame. No flats or bias. Frames were all dark subtracted and stacked in DeepSkyStacker. The 50mm lens was wide open at f/1.8. Using a fixed tripod, 8 seconds was all I could get at this focal length before the stars started to trail. Once stacked, the images were processed in Photoshop. There were obviously lens aberrations with the lens wide open but it did enable me to capture the nebulosity! Looking at the individual frames, you can see the stars drift but DSS does a good job of aligning and stacking! Paul

[Andymac79]

I used the kit Canon 18-55mm lens for a wide field shot of the Milky Way through Cygnus last year. One of the first times I'd actually tried wide field at all, in fact. It came out ok. The shot has its faults, but we all have to start somewhere.

Here you go:

http://www.tanstaafl...idefield-image/

James

First time ive seen your blog James, its a cracker !

[JamesF]

First time ive seen your blog James, its a cracker !

Thank you. I meant to add some updates this weekend, but failed miserably. I must get around to it this week.

James

[Andymac79]

You should tag it in your sig. Sweep the modesty aside.

[Scott]

First time ive seen your blog James, its a cracker !

yes, good one James. Although I wish you'd stop posting your milkyway pics after mine. kind of embarresing me

Scott

[JamesF]

yes, good one James. Although I wish you'd stop posting your milkyway pics after mine. kind of embarresing me

I'm only ever in competition with myself

James