Few pics while fishing (Milky Way too)

[Spudrick187]

Hey everyone, while I was fishing I decided to take a few wide fields as it was clear, anyway here they are. I'm still learning at the moment so was wonder if anyone can help. What is the star cluster I've captured? Also I woke up at 3am and noticed the Milky Way! Only the 2nd time I've ever seen it so I'm well chuffed I managed to capture that on camera although it's nowhere near as good as you guys on here. Anyway I'll stop going on now, any comments are welcome (good or bad)??

[laudropb]

Nice photos.

[Starwiz]

Quote "while I was fishing I decided to take a few wide fields as it was clear, anyway here they are. I'm still learning at the moment so was wonder if anyone can help. "

Nice photos.  Not sure I can help with those, but I try to fool the carp by using small hook-baits amongst a scattering of boilies.  They are used to being caught on the boilies so will often avoid them, picking over the small offerings instead.   

John

[Starcluster]

Wow ,, great photos, they remind me of the times in the mid 1980s that I used my 35 mill slr camera to take  time exposure night-time,star trail shots. Looking at your pics makes me wasn't to dig out my old cameras. 35 mill film can still be bought and developed at Speilmans. 

[Starcluster]

Pic of my 127 refractor with home made Baader dollar filter to view sin spots.

[wxsatuser]

The cluster in the last photo is the M44 Beehive Cluster or Praesepe.
The two bright stars on the right edge are Castor and Pollux

[Spudrick187]

Thanks everyone for your comments, like I said I'm still a beginner and learning. I can't wait to be able to take pics like you lot? Anyone got any recommendations for a setup that doesn't cost the earth eg scope, mount etc. I'd like to stick with a dslr for the time being too but I've heard it's not the best way to take pics, I'd really like to dso's, any help would be appreciated?

[williamnohair]

Your first picture is excellent, I am also a relative beginner and would love to get a wide field image of the milky way like that, however I live in sunny Orpington so LP stops me, however I have tried from dark locations and never quite nailed it, so well done.

The things I have found by experience are:

Use a fast as possible lens that your budget will allow. I bought a Samyang lens (Korean company) manual focus and aperture for a very reasonable price and the quality is very good, ideal for Astro work as its all manual! However I do have a Canon fixed 200mm at 2.8. which I wouldn't swap for the world. With wide field the big problem will be focussing unless you can find something large and bright to get your initial focus on. And to really get a good image use tracking, not sure if you used any tracking on that picture or not. Then you can go for  longer exposures at possibly iso400 or 800, I normally focus at the top end say 1600 then expose at say 400 or 800 it depends on the seeing and LP. So take a few test shots first to test the water.

Hope I am not telling you to suck eggs but good luck and looks like you live in a good area for taking some fantastic shots!

BTW I had a Bresser like yours, good scope for the money but way too big for me to trundle in and out every night!

[happy-kat]

You can make more of the equipment you have right now. It you had taken 20 images of the same thing and then stacked them using deep space stacker DSS you would have seen even more i in the final image. Free processing software such as paint.net and GIMP would draw even more out.

[Psychobilly]

It was the views of the night sky while night (sea) fishing that got me to dabble in this astro photography  in the first place...

Peter...