Southern end of the Milky Way Western Australia

[Aussie Dave]

Second attempt at the Milky Way with Nikon D3100, single shot, standard 18mm zoom lens, UV filter, ISO 1600, 20 seconds, edited in PaintDotNet.

Taken in my suburban backyard in the South West corner of Western Australia.

[Daniel-K]

good effort dave why not try taking more and stacking them ! looks like you have some nice skies there!!!

[Aussie Dave]

Hi Daniel. I did take about 15 exposures tonight and used RegiStar to align and stack but the end result was no better than one of my single exposures. I couldn't see any difference apart from maybe a bit less noise.

I only downloaded RegiStar tonight and testing it out. It's the only software that can align my star field images correctly so far, have tried a few others. A nice simple program too.

I processed this next exposure a little differently.

 

[Daniel-K]

dave try deepsky stacker instead http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html much better IMHO

[happy-kat]

Why not try stacking in deep space stacker and then tweak in paint you use.

[wxsatuser]

The Coal Sack is showing nicely.

[Aussie Dave]

12 hours ago, Daniel-K said:

dave try deepsky stacker instead http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html much better IMHO

Thanks for the link Daniel. I've noticed it mentioned often here and I don't know why I haven't looked in to this piece of software before.

 

12 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Why not try stacking in deep space stacker and then tweak in paint you use.

Trying it out now Happy-Kat. If the end result is better than my single exposures, I'll post another image to compare.

 

4 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

The Coal Sack is showing nicely.

Mike is the Coal Sack the darker patch of sky at the bottom?

[happy-kat]

There is definitely more 'stuff' in your stacked image so be interesting to see what DSS does. I thought registax was for planet type work I shoud read up on it some more.

Edit, put my glasses on...

Registar not heard of that one

[Aussie Dave]

Yep Happy-Kat RegiStar seems better at aligning star field images but it's light on settings, I like simple though and it does work quite well. You can see it working live on your images too. It's another imaging tool to add to the pack, I like it for it's simplicity.

Ok I tried Deep Sky Stacker and it failed to align about 20 images on the first 2 attempts. I went through my photos and picked out 10 that were similar in composition (similar looking shots). It did align and stack eventually but I do have some edge problems with alignment in the final result. I've also lost whole sections of stars, most noticeable up the top and bottom left and right. I think this is only poor photo editing skills by myself.

I've failed on this next image but I'll keep working on it.

Image editors used for this were Raw Therapee then Paint.

[happy-kat]

It is good to lose some edge this means it was aligned on the stars. After using dss you need to trim around the edges to remove the stack artifacts. Your foreground should come out slightly blurred due to the stars rotating and dss aligning on those.

Edit. Just looked again at image, if you stretch it a little don't more stars come out. Also watch the background doesn't get too black I think the posh term is clipped.

[Aussie Dave]

This next image was with RegiStar and edited in Paint. Sorry for the frame edges down the bottom.

This is the best I can atm with my noisy data and suburban light pollution. Will post one more if I can bring out more fluff.

 

Going through my shots I noticed something unusual in one of them. At first I thought I'd captured my first galaxy but on inspection and viewing the area full sized it was a very small shooting star, my first

[happy-kat]

I see the shotting object :-)

Hope you don't mind, I downloaded your image to take a peep and see what was in it. I noticed looking at levels that it is clipped. The black data is all the way to the left hand side, you want to ideally leave a space there from the side before the black data then it is sort of more tonal on the image not so black black. I so hoping to be able to get to use my camera soon and take some images and play as well.

[Aussie Dave]

24 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

It is good to lose some edge this means it was aligned on the stars. After using dss you need to trim around the edges to remove the stack artifacts. Your foreground should come out slightly blurred due to the stars rotating and dss aligning on those.

Edit. Just looked again at image, if you stretch it a little don't more stars come out. Also watch the background doesn't get too black I think the posh term is clipped.

I'll try to drag more out, the stars are blown out as it is. I was expecting more from it. Will have a break for a while, give the eyes a rest and get back to it. If I get better I'll post.

[Aussie Dave]

3 hours ago, happy-kat said:

I see the shotting object :-)

Hope you don't mind, I downloaded your image to take a peep and see what was in it. I noticed looking at levels that it is clipped. The black data is all the way to the left hand side, you want to ideally leave a space there from the side before the black data then it is sort of more tonal on the image not so black black. I so hoping to be able to get to use my camera soon and take some images and play as well.

Yes I should probably take back what I said and say shooting object as I don't know what it is, meteorite, space junk or aliens on-route to their next resource haul.

Cheers Happy-Kat for having a look at my work, I really appreciate that. There's not much more I can bring out of these images really, single shots or stacked.

I hope you get out there soon and get some better data than me.

[wxsatuser]

11 hours ago, Aussie Dave said:

 

Mike is the Coal Sack the darker patch of sky at the bottom?

Yes that darker patch in the bottom right of centre.
The Coalsack is a dark nebula, one of the most obvious ones in the sky.

In your second image, just below it, just poking above the roof is Beta Centauri