Milky Way 3rd Attempt

[Aussie Dave]

Tonight I waited until the Milky Way was in a better position and away from one of the street lights. The Milky Way was almost above me around 3:30am, the moon was rising so I snapped about 26x 20 second shots with the Nikon D3100, standard 18mm zoom lens, UV filter, ISO 1600.

I haven't processed the 26 shots just yet but I did a quick process with 1 exposure in Paint. Results are completely different to my first 2 attempts.

I've noticed in all my work that the red channel is always out, so I adjust the red but in this instantance the resulting overall colour was noticeably greenish. So I ended up taking some green out. I'm not exactly sure what the true colour is supposed to look like.

This is the first single exposure, 20 second

[kenny k]

I think the best thing would be to make sure all colour channels are aligned and then tweak to your own liking,sorry i dont use Paint.

 

Kenny

[Aussie Dave]

Yep, that's what I've been doing from the start Kenny. I thought there may be some rule or guide, cheers.

ok so these next 2 are stacked from RegiStar, 26 exposures @ 20 seconds each, finished off in PDN. The first was to bring out as many stars as I could and the last for neb cloud.

[wxsatuser]

This is what the MM looks like.

There will be brown to orange dust, blacks and of course emission nebs.

http://www.astrophoto.com/CentralBulge.htm

[Aussie Dave]

ok thanks wxsatuser, so I'm way off in my processing then, plus I need to triple my total exposure time. My camera is unmodified.

[Daniel-K]

Dave are you using a mount that can track?

[Aussie Dave]

nah Daniel, just a camera tripod. I can mount my camera on top of my 6" refractor or 8" Mak on the EQ6 but I'm not confident with setup and alignment yet. I still haven't found the Southern polar alignment star.

I'm thinking of doing a long 2-3 hour exposure on the tripod to get some star trail arcs to work out where it is exactly.