widefield from Kingston...

[Gonzo]

After a few clear nights and lots of frustration about PHD, my EQ1 and everything else you can think off.... I have finally been able to take the following picture.

lights: 51 @ 30sec & ISO800

dark: 25

bias: lots

camera: GF1

lens: 28mm Rokkor stepped down at f5.6

DSS stacked using the default recommendations (nearly 4 hours on my tiny laptop)

Very crude rubbish processing using The Gimp.

I took it on Wednesday night and processed it last night, it's only then that I've realised that I didn't set the camera to RAW but JPEG....

It might not look that great to you lot, but for me it's a milestone ahead of what I've been doing so far, which is... not much...

link to astrobin: http://www.astrobin.com/55296/ with annotations.

Obviously comments are needed, bad or good, fire away please.

[neil groves]

I would find darker skies, this would have been a pretty scene if you had uniform luminosity across the frame.

Any idea what constellations here?

Neil.

[Gonzo]

Dark skies... being within the M25 zone... dark skies are well, non existent here

In that picture, I got the Triangulum constellation, part of the Perseus and also part of the Aries constellation.

[neil groves]

A weekly drive into the country would serve you well then, I thought I had dark skies in my back yard till oneday I had the opportunity to travel the Mojave desert one night, I didn't have a telescope or bino's at the time but my god, it was a completely different experience.

Neil.

[Scott]

Hope you don't mind, I played with the gradient in Photoshop

0fc42002-55c7-4f57-93a4-7c0339d5fbd6_hd by Scott Prideaux 1961, on Flickr

[Gonzo]

Of course I don't mind, I'm still learning on how to "process" my crappy pictures:)

I'm only using The Gimp and we all know the limitation in the software, I will end up getting Pixinsight one day, but my pictures are not worth it yet.

I'm currently in south Spain (near Denia), light pollution here is way way way less than back home. However, I've left my lens adaptor on my dinning table at home... doh

I can't use my camera at all, it's an old lens...

oh well, but luck next time I'm out to a dark(ish) site.

[Scott]

It looks lovely there