Bite Size Milky Way

[Buzzard75]

Went out to do some planetary and some widefield imaging last night. I had to crop a significant amount of my widefield image though. I was at our dark site, but I had considerably more light pollution than I had anticipated. I didn't shoot with my CLS filter in like I should have so the edges of my exposures were ruined. It didn't really show up that badly until I started messing with levels and curves. The other reason I had to cut out a good bit of it was because some moron decided to continuously walk back and forth through my shots even after I told him not to. Repeatedly. He was one of those oblivious types that just had no understanding of what was going on. I only had one capture that didn't have him in it and there was a bit of high level clouds which made that image less than stellar. So I just stacked all of my images and cropped as little as possible. This was the result. For a reference point, the bright spot left and below center is Saturn. The one in the upper right edge is Antares. This was last night just before 11:30pm EDT. It's a beautiful bit of the Milky Way and is my first attempt at capturing it.

[happy-kat]

That's lovely.

How long were those exposures please.

[Buzzard75]

22 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

That's lovely.

How long were those exposures please.

Thanks! I used my iOptron Skyguider Pro and took 10x150s exposures, ISO800, f/4. This was using my Canon 750D and the 18-55mm EF-s lens.

[happy-kat]

That's a great advert for the kit lens. Thanks for adding the shot info. 

[MarsG76]

After all those obstacles you have a very nice result.... and yeah, a lot of people are morons.

 

[Buzzard75]

Thanks all for the looks and the likes. After editing my last round of images, I've come to a few conclusions and feel the need to invest in some equipment. Top of my list is a better widefield lens. Right now I only have two kit lenses for my Canon 750D. They're not bad, they're just not great. I need something a little better. I'm eyeing the Rokinon 14mm f/2.4. Next on my list is either a monitor or a new laptop or both. I'm running everything on my Surface Pro 4. It works fine and is fantasticly portable for data aquisition, but editing on it is a chore sometimes. It's not extremely powerful, but it's not a snail either. The biggest problem I have with it is the screen. It's pretty small and has a terrible glare on it. There are some artifacts and other areas of concern in this image that I didn't even notice until I looked at it on another screen. The glare I can fix, the size I'd need a monitor to fix. But if I'm going to do that, maybe I just invest in a new laptop all together.

If anyone has recommendations on good monitors for photo editing that don't cost an arm and a leg, let me know.

[happy-kat]

Using n LG model LG 22M47VQ and after so careful adjustments of the settings manually very pleased with it. It has an excellent dot pitch and great colour rendition (after I fiddled with the settings). It was not expensive but whether it is for you in Aus no idea. There is always better but it was as much as wanted to pay, around £100 GBP some months back.

[happy-kat]

I should add that I do also have a navidia g force graphics card in the PC and it was those settings I used for fine tuning the display.