[Theme] Night sky shots

[CS]

I would have to dub you as Master of the Night, Oivind!

[Øivind Tøien]

Carl, thanks for the kind remark - I have a very long way to go before I deserve the master title. I have only scratched the surface of all the processing tricks that are being used out there, and I am not imaging from a very dark site. However it is fun to try get the best out of what one have. The late imaging from the comfort near my cabin lowers the threshold to go out and set up (might take an hour before focus and framing is OK) as I can then do other things while the tracker is working and just do periodic checks.

[Jakov Minić]

Øivind, Øivind, Øivind!
Freezingly cool images!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Jakov for the enthusiastic comment.

[armando_m]

Last night the local astronomy group went to a dark location, weather was forecast to be cloudy so I stayed home, then when it got dark the sky cleared .... decide to try my luck shooting from home, the roof above the kitchen is somewhat protected from the street lights

Locating Andromeda in the middle of the city was challenging as I can see only the brighter stars, locating polaris to align the tracker is challenging started shooting at 70mm in the general direction, at my latitude the camera is nearly point upwards, so it is impossible to look through the viewfinder at the height of my setup
Tried using my 90 degree visor but that area of the sky does not have to many bright stars and it didn't help
Started reviewing images an moving the camera to have andromeda in the middle of the frame increasing the zoom until I was at 300mm

and then the focus wasn't quite there

ok ... removed the camera from the tripod and used live view to focus on a brighter start somewhere else

mounted the camera again

hmm it is not quite in the center , accidentally  bumped the focus , repeat ...

took me about 1 hr to get the camera pointed in the right direction with good enough focus

left the camera shooting hoping for the best, and came down to eat dinner 

this is sooc image (3000*2000pixels resized to 1200) and then the processed version

[Akira]

Armando, I don't even see any hint of this beautiful result (the second image) in the first one.  Is Andromeda really the diffused light spot in the center?  Did you rotate the image after you had cropped it?

[Øivind Tøien]

Armando, that procedure of trial and error in focusing and aiming and spending an hour before one can start acquiring images for the stack sounds very familiar  . Great result considering the conditions. It is often fascinating how images with hardly visible object turn to something useful once they are stacked and stretched. The rewards do not happen before that stage.

Finding Andromeda is not that difficult though if one starts with Cassiopeia, follow the right leg down to the really bright star way below, go one really bright star to the right, then up to the fainter star above it and then keep going an equal distance up to Andromeda. A red dot sight where one can aim accurately while having a wider view helps a lot here. But it gets tricky if there is need to refocus when imaging in a region without any bright stars visible in live view.

[armando_m]

Armando, I don't even see any hint of this beautiful result (the second image) in the first one.  Is Andromeda really the diffused light spot in the center?  Did you rotate the image after you had cropped it?

Akira, yes the image is rotated in the processed image , deep sky stacker oriented it differently and I did not consider rotating it the same way,
and yes andromeda it the diffused light in the center of the sooc image

Armando, that procedure of trial and error in focusing and aiming and spending an hour before one can start acquiring images for the stack sounds very familiar  . Great result considering the conditions. It is often fascinating how images with hardly visible object turn to something useful once they are stacked and stretched. The rewards do not happen before that stage.

Finding Andromeda is not that difficult though if one starts with Cassiopeia, follow the right leg down to the really bright star way below, go one really bright star to the right, then up to the fainter star above it and then keep going an equal distance up to Andromeda. A red dot sight where one can aim accurately while having a wider view helps a lot here. But it gets tricky if there is need to refocus when imaging in a region without any bright stars visible in live view.

Thanks Øivind, indeed without the stack it would be impossible to get anywhere close to the final result

I did use Casiopea to orient my self with a lightly different procedure
- using the big triangle as an arrow point to toward Mirach
- the width of Casiopea is close enough to the distance from the tip of the arrow to Andromeda

I'll look into getting a red dot sight

[Bent Hjarbo]

Today I built a simple bard door tracker.
The sky was ok to night so I vent out for testing.
I dis obvious some error, apart from the unstable setup.
I raised the camera plate during the exposure, maybe it should have been lowered, as the star trail is longer when the barn door is used
Live outside Copenhagen, Norther hemisphere.
Any suggestion is welcome.
I should maybe excuse for the poor quality of the images

[Øivind Tøien]

Today I built a simple bard door tracker.
The sky was ok to night so I vent out for testing.
I dis obvious some error, apart from the unstable setup.
I raised the camera plate during the exposure, maybe it should have been lowered, as the star trail is longer when the barn door is used
Live outside Copenhagen, Norther hemisphere.
Any suggestion is welcome.
I should maybe excuse for the poor quality of the images

Great Job. Yes, in the northern hemisphere, if you view the tracker from above, it should rotate clockwise, so it calls for some modification.

Your "southern hemisphere image" (upside down) in the March thread would have provided the correct direction of rotation.   

[Bent Hjarbo]

Thank you Øivind
Will have to some days as the weather is not for star photography for a while.

[armando_m]

Good luck Bent , wish you some clear nights

Do your turn the screw by hand ?

[Bent Hjarbo]

Yes I did turn by hand, may have to find a way to get more stability during the exposure.

[David Paterson]

I love these, Armando, and I wish I could do night shots as good as these.

[Akira]

Bent, I'm afraid I don't really understand how the wooden parts work, but I do wish you a good luck and am looking forward to seeing any improvements!