Almost no stars around Polaris?

[Jannis]

Well, they suddenly came out from hiding...

Ok, so i Was using a 55mm lens for this, but still.

Actually, i took this only to see how the 550D/T2i rebel did on long exposures.

So yes, this a Single frame, 31 minute exposure frame, with the cameras buildt in dark frame for noise reduction. Also added 4 dark flat frames for, well, no aperant reason actually, but...

Result became quite ok. Not good, but OK. OK enough for me to share it here at least.

So what i've learned is;

1. Polaris have tons of stars around it, and it's not even as bright as it sounds when talking about polar alignment and how you "can't misstake it as it's the only bright star in that area" (first time i learned polar alignment it took me 2 hours just to find the darn star, haha).

2. the 550D, even if it's said to have a lot of long exposure noise and by some said to be nerly useless for long exposure deep sky pics, it seems to be, well, i let you say what you want, but i can see clearly without too much noise from a single frame at least.

You may say it's because of the buildt in noise reduction, but hey, don't we all take dark frames anyway and add them manually, so what's the differense?

and 3. hmm, no idea what to write here... but, shuold i mention it was taken unguided after a quick polar and 2 star alignment using only the camera's live view to center the stars?

Full res can be found here (sorry for slow loading, rather large file):

http://jannis.no-ip.info/astro/Polaris31min4darkflat.jpg

[Jannis]

Does anyone know how faint stars i've captured here, btw?

[Adz]

Nice! Very interesting to know there is other things around that area of sky What exposures did you use?

[msinclairinork]

31mins UNGUIDED!!! Thats got to be a record! even though it was at the pole it was still quite a widish field.

Well done!

Interesting test

Thanks for sharing,

Michael

[Jannis]

Nice! Very interesting to know there is other things around that area of sky What exposures did you use?

Thanks

It was taken as a single exposure of 31 min, no stacked frames (other then the dark flats, wich was completly useless in this case).

[Demonperformer]

Just had a quick compare with CdC and you have got fainter than m12, certainly.

[Adz]

That is incredible. Even if it was around the pole star that hardly moves. Sorry I didn't read up above in the first post.