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Night Sky Shot

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WoodButcher

WoodButcher

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Location
Austin, TX
First Name
Rusty
Last Name
Myers
Well, was goofing around last night and wandered out with my new lens and the sky was clear. Well, as clear as it can get this close to Austin. I had a tripod downstairs so I grabbed it and did just a few shots. This one was just 1 second. At 200mm that is enough for the stars to just show some movement, but at f2.8 was open enough to capture the gas clouds of M42, the Orion Nebula. What I need to do is some shorter shutter speeds and stack them. Actually I need to use the 150-500mm lens, but it is f6.3 at 500mm so more shots at even shorter shutter speeds and stacked.

This is a crop to show the middle half of the image. I'm putting it up just to show how easy it is to get some really cool images at night. 1 sec, f2.8, ISO 1600. I shot both jpeg and RAW, but this is from the jped (auto uploads to the web and I was at work so I processed what I had. Used Lightroom on the web)

1450913706251-XL.jpg
 
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Hold my beer, I wonder if I can capture that galaxy with my trusty cell phone :-)

Nice work!
 
Very nice, Rusty.

The other night Melody mentioned the Geminid meteor showers which I had no idea were going on. I went outside and didn't see any but it was about 10:00pm. I noticed looking straight up I could see the Milky Way, if I looked west the light pollution from Austin/Pflugerville was horrible and drowned out any stars. If I looked east I could see thousands. Last night at work I noticed around Lago Vista there wasn't much light pollution at all and could see a clear sky. There's areas up by the Lago Vista airport that are vacant streets, no houses, so you can get a clear shot upward. It's closer for you and I work out there but driving from home on a night off is a bit far (1 hour). East of Coupland is much easier.
 
1 second and star movement? :ponder:

I would have guessed a tad bit of wind and not rock solid tripod/mounting head. I've done up to 20 seconds with no movement I could see.

But still - WOW, all that gas. I haven't been able to get that yet.
 
Depends on mm of lens. With my wide angle at 11mm I can go almost 20. On a full frame that would be 30. With my 70-200 at 200mm 1 second is showing some arc.

Somewhere I have a link for a exposure time calculator.
 
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