Milky Way (D810a) with object details

[Avdhoeven]

This is an extended version of my previous released image. I had taken during the night at a later time more imagery of another part of the milky way and mosaiced them together now. I show this image in an overview together with more detailed images of some of the objects that are visible. This gives a better insight in the scale and location of the objects.

Original description:

Currently I'm enjoying my holidays in Vandans, Austria. Just before this holiday I could pick up a Nikon D810a from Nikon HQ to try it out for 3 weeks. Of course I don't say no to that. This is a brand new camera that was handpicked and calibrated manually by Nikon (a so-called QC model).

Two nights ago it was clear and I wanted to try out the camera. I doubted what to do, put it on my scope (knowing I have some trouble with the flatness of the field, and need some calibration time) or trying to do the Milky Way. Until now I never made really nice Milky Way images, so I decided to go for this challenge.

Also I took my new Skywatcher Star Adventurer, so I could work nicely stand-alone, without any further equipment. I decided to go for wide field with a Nikon 14-24mm that I got with the camera.

So I started with the polar alignment of the Star Adventurer. That goes really well, but I did find out you need to do this for every image series as it is moved very easily when changing the camera position.

After focussing I started with 60s images at ISO800 to see what the D810a showed. I was very impressed. The Milky Way just jumped into view and was very well visible. Now I have to say it's quite dark here with only some lights at the horizon.

I took about an hour of imagery, 60 images. After processing, alignment, stacking and putting back the background (that was lost by the stacking) and stretching I got the following result. I had never seen the Milky Way like this, and so I enjoyed the full night...

Camera: Nikon D810a

Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer

Exposure: 50x60s ISO800 14mm f/3.5 + 8x300s ISO800

Milky way with objects visible by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

[RichM63]

Great image, but I'm loving the annotated detail, very educational.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice work, always good to see DSOs in context.

[Starlight 1]

Very nice , 

[Avdhoeven]

It seems there was an error in the image. Here is an updated version:

Milky Way with visible objects by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

[laudropb]

Lovely image. Very nice idea with the annotation. Makes it much more interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[GeoffB]

A lovely set of pictures Andre the D810a obviously helped but I think you did the hard work. Its great seeing the milky way in this way. The mapping of your pictures really put things in context. I might have to mount one of my aged nikons on a poĺar aligned mount for shooting with my 18mm or 50mm lenses.