Identification help and Photo advice

[Frazcam]

Hi everyone!

I'll be honest and say that I'm not a antronomer, and as such am somewhat hijacking your forum in the hope that you can help me figure out what I've taken a photo of - sorry and thanks in advance! I have never taken a photo of the night sky before this one, but the stars on Tiree were incredible last night and so thought it was worth a quick go . Without a tripod or shutter release I just dialled the ISO up to 3200 and lay the camera on its back for a 30s exposure - I have attached the shot that I got from it. This is looking directly up at about 1am, I unfortunately can't remember what way I had the camera turned so no idea where North is. What I'm wondering is, what is the large yellow object that is at the bottom left of the frame? Come to think of it, is there anything else of note featured in the shot? I can't even figure out any constellations on account of the photo being so busy with stars!

Also, while I'm here I might as well ask; what is the shortest exposure you can take before you start seeing star trails? Definitely going to get more involved in taking star shots as - with this being my first go - I can hopefully do a lot better with some practice! Also, what do you find to be more acceptable - noise generated by longer shutter speeds, or noise from high ISO? Would I be right in thinking that to avoid star trails I'm going to have to accept that I'll be dealing with both - or can I take a 20-30 min exposure with low ISO without having the stars move and blur? Any pointers towards good online info and resources would be amazing

Many thanks to anyone kind enough to get back to me!

Fraser

[Leveye]

The large yellow blotch is the Andromeda Galaxy you also caught some of the milky way. You can't get much more than 25 seconds exposure on a tripod setup and even then it must be a wide angle lens say under 18mm or so. Well done and welcome to astrophotography!

[Adamar98]

You've definitely got M31 Andromeda (large yellow object) in there and a good bit of the milkyway. you'll be limited to about 20 second exposure with no tracking mount. try taking say 20 images at the same iso and exposure time and stacking them. Its a great Image. 

[ronin]

Nice enough image for lying it on the ground.

Cannot work out quickly what bit of the sky you are aiming at, but the big yellow thing looks like a galaxy, the question is which one.

It has come out nicely however.

When the exposures get above 30 sec trailing will occur. So what you are getting is expected. In general 20 seconds should be OK, 30 seconds is pushing your luck. However as you can see there is some trailing but that doesn't really detract much.

There is a web site or something where you can put in the image and it will try determine what you were looking at. Just I have not a clue what it is. Hopefully someone may know.

As said came out nice.

[Frazcam]

Many thanks for the replies everyone. I did think it was galaxy but not having any astro knowledge I also wondered if it could be a planet - thanks for the info! Really pleased with it, certainly pleased enough to get more into astro photography. I'm a working photographer so happy to have stumbled into a new hobby to keep the camera interesting when I'm not geting paid! Fortunately for me I get out to Tiree 3-4 times a year so next time I'll be better prepared with the gear that I bring along.

20 seconds?? Wow. That's really short. So to get a sharper, less noisy, less blurry version of this photo I'm really needing to get a tracker rail (sounds expensive... but fun).

Thanks for info about that identification website, will have a google for it and see what I can find.

[RT65CB-SWL]

Hi Frazcam/Fraser and welocome to SGL.

Hope you are going to stay and share your passion with with us all. That is a great photo too.

Don't be afraid to ask. We all have different skill sets and experiances etc.

[andyman]

It could be quite a few galaxies but inckling towards m31

[JB80]

Ohhhh Fraser, what have you started?

That's a pretty good image with loads of detail, you must have nice skies.

You will have a blast doing astro stuff.

20 seconds is short but what you can do to achieve better results is to take say 20 shots of the same thing without moving the camera, you then can load those images into some free stacking software and stack them.

Here is a good write up about it from one of our members.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/36308-basic-widefield-with-a-camera-and-tripod/

Also if you are on flickr you can join the astrometry group and it should solve the stars for you, even check their website which is astrometry.net I think otherwise you can join astrobin which is like a flickr for astro photos and they have a plate solving(naming the stars) function too.

[glowingturnip]

reading somewhere that 250/focal-length-in-mm is the maximum in seconds you can expose for without trailing showing.  Sounds a touch low to me, and also I think that's for 35mm film cameras, so not sure if it needs adjusting for the 21st century, but it's a start.

Second what JB80 said, put the photo on flickr, join the astrometry group and put the photo on there, it'll automatically come back and label all the interesting bits for you (might need to put the catalogue names in wikipedia if that's all it gives you).

Nice photo though, great to see a galaxy pop out in a wide-field shot like that !

[wxsatuser]

Cassiopeia top left to centre.

[glowingturnip]

found something else that contradicts my first post (how do I edit posts anyway ?) 

focal length

[Frazcam]

Wow guys, this is the friendliest forum I've ever felt the need to post on, brilliant chat from everyone so thank you. I will upload the shot to Flickr and get it posted in the Astro group. I have a small telescope that I have never really got into using (other than looking at the moon) as I have always found star charts and astonomy guides a bit overwhelming - looks like I've found a route into a hobby that I have been looking to pursue for a while. Seems mad that I hadn't thought of the photography side of it before. What have I started, indeed.

Interestingly it seems like I got really lucky with the lack of blur and reasonable detail - i used a 50mm. Also shot it at 1.8, so very soft. Can't wait to get a trackable tripod head - really excited about getting more into this! Unfortunately I live in Edinburgh so no chance of decent shot opportunities there, but seems like the kind of hobby worth taking a drive for. Fate maybe, but it was only last week that I found out about the dark sky park down dunfries way. It's a sign!

[glowingturnip]

argh

focal length   exposure time

28mm            35s

50mm           20s

135mm        7.5s

300mm         3.3s

those are for stars near the celestial equator - you can get longer exposures for stars near the celestial poles

[wxsatuser]

found something else that contradicts my first post (how do I edit posts anyway ?) 

focal length

You will need 250 posts to edit.

[glowingturnip]

aha, excuse me while I spam the board for...  221 posts !

[wxsatuser]

That will not work as you will get your posts reduced...

[Frazcam]

argh

focal length   exposure time

28mm            35s

50mm           20s

135mm        7.5s

300mm         3.3s

those are for stars near the celestial equator - you can get longer exposures for stars near the celestial poles

Great general info there, thanks, will keep it in mind. I'm guessing i'll figure it all out for myself soon enough if I get enough chances - pretty gutted to be getting into all this just as the winter is coming in!

Does anyone have any suggestions about  affordable tracking units? I realise there's lots I can do photo wise without one, but just out of interest. Are there particular brands that are more reliable than others? What would be the cheapest reliable unit I could get?

[Adamar98]

Great general info there, thanks, will keep it in mind. I'm guessing i'll figure it all out for myself soon enough if I get enough chances - pretty gutted to be getting into all this just as the winter is coming in!

Winter is the best time for it! Your starting at just the right time!

[Alveprinsen]

20 seconds?? Wow. That's really short. So to get a sharper, less noisy, less blurry version of this photo I'm really needing to get a tracker rail (sounds expensive... but fun).

Get a tripod and a remote timer shutter controller for your camera. Take lots and lots of 20sec pictures at iso 800 or so. Use a problem called Deep Sky Stacker to stack all the images and combine all the 20sec exposures to one long exposure.

Also, turn noise reduction off in the camera, and take half as many pictures with the lens-cap on as you did with it off. Basically, you are photographing the noise. Deep Sky Stacker will use these images and subtract them from your final image.

If you take 100 20 sec exposures of the milky way, try to do 50 exposures of equal shutter-speed and iso setting... It improves the images immensly.

When you're tired of doing that, put house up for a second morgage and get the most kickass astro equipment you can get your hands on. This hobby is more addictive than heroine, and I bet its more expensive too.

Sincerely, Alveprinsen.

[Alveprinsen]

... Use a problem called ..

Uhm, make that proGRAM...

[ronin]

Alveprinsen, on 06 Oct 2013 - 03:10 AM, said:

... Use a problem called ..

Uhm, make that proGRAM...

You may have been right the first time, I've known a lot of problems that were programs.

Liked the image as there have been a few people asking recently what they can do with an undriven mount and a camera, this is a nice example of what can be easily achieved.

[PhotoGav]

I love it - while we all tool ourselves up with amazing gizmos, this pic is just a camera plonked on the ground... and what a stunning result. Yes, welcome to a fantastically demanding way to use your camera - demanding in terms of cash, patience and physical tolerance of cold late nights... But, man the results are out of this world....!

Try a long exposure too, or better still a series of long exposures without moving the camera, then put the images together and marvel at those beautiful star trails......

[Amra]

Upload this image on astrobin.com and let it plate solve the image, it will put a nice overview of information over your image, what constellations & DSOs it contains, it's a really nice feature that I like.

Here's an example from the M42 I took with my 50mm lens: http://astrob.in/56369/

[Frazcam]

Brilliant straight-forward advice there, thanks! Back in starless Edinburgh so will need to plan a wee trip out into darker skies sometime soon so I can give it a go. I do wonder though, at 20s and ISO 800, I'm way underexposing for the kind of shot I got here - so am i going to have to settle for fewer stars (and hence, amazingness)?

[Frazcam]

Somehow missed the last two posts - didn't see that the thread had spillied over onto a second page! Thanks for the link Amra, will check that out tonight.

Thanks to everyone for all the kind words as well! Definitely helping me feel more excited about this new hobby of mine.