Milky way in the back garden

[CommanderShepherd]

Hi there, only my second post - the first one was to sort out a little confusion over what mod my 2nd hand camera has :-)

Last night was the first clear night in ages, so I thought I'd have a go in the back garden - this is a simple widefield shot, slightly cropped I did as a test. Turned out to be my favourite image of the night by default as I knocked my astrotrac soon after and lost polar alignment when I went to get a longer lens to try and do a bit of nebula shooting!

It's not brilliant - it's noisy, but I like it anyway. Using (I now think) an IR modded Canon 550d, an astronomik CLS filter, a Samyang 14mm (at ~22 mm on the crop sensor) and the aforementioned astrotrac. It was one 3 minute shot, f2.8 ISO 1600.

The bit I was most pleased by was the nebula - any tips on processing, welcomed!

[laudropb]

Very nice. You are lucky to have such dark skies. Thanks for posting.

[CommanderShepherd]

Very nice. You are lucky to have such dark skies. Thanks for posting.

Thanks! Yes very lucky indeed - not bad for the outskirts of a small town. I can thank the global financial crisis for that - they've turned off quite a few of the street lamps where i live late at night - the whole town is livid apart from me!

[pipnina]

Thanks! Yes very lucky indeed - not bad for the outskirts of a small town. I can thank the global financial crisis for that - they've turned off quite a few of the street lamps where i live late at night - the whole town is livid apart from me!

In plymouth they're considering turning off all the non-essential street lamps and dimming them where they can (esp. in the city centre) It makes me very happy.

But to the topic, that's a very nice image, my first MW shot from my front garden was much less inspiring (very orange...).

That IR mod seems to have had an incredible affect on your red channel, it's definately an advertisement...

[Pete Presland]

Cracking image!