Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So for full disclosure, I have to say I prefer the many excellent images of the Milky Way being posted by FW members that show a widefield image soaring over the landscape, often with some lighting (man made or otherwise) that manages to show at little detail in the foreground while still keeping a natural look to the final result.
This image is NOT one of those, but illustrates that interesting detail can be pulled out at virtually any magnification if you can track the stars and start to stack images together. And then I have included a 2nd image (that I think I may have even already posted once) that also shows the other thing about astroimaging - that you can always render more detail with more magnification, up to the limit of your tracking and seeing anyway.
Here is an image made with an astro modified Canon T2i of the Milky Way crossing overhead down in New Mexico under new moon dark skies. Of particular interest is the small but recognizable shape and color of the North America Nebula...
Shootings details as follows:
Equipment:
Canon 500D (T2i)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Canon 16-35 f/4 L IS, @ f/4, 16mm
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom 4.3
Photoshop CS2
Light Frames:
4 x 180 secs (12 mins)
6 x 240 secs (24 mins)
In case you couldn't make it out, or wanted to start to see some of the detail that comes with more magnbification, Here then (from the same trip) is a natural color image of the 'wall' section of the same North America Nebula, now shot at 580mm instead of 16mm...
Shooting Details:
Equipment:
Canon 550D (astro-modified, clear glass filter)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Light Frames:
14 x 360 secs
2 x 300 secs (1 hr 34 mins)
Dark Frames:
15 x 360 secs (1 hr 30 mins)
Other Frames:
30 Bias
No Flats
It is interesting to note that this is the same mount and same camera, just a different optic, and about 3x longer amount of integrated data for the close up shot. I have seen even higher magnification images that zoom in on just small sections of the 'wall', revealing even more intricate detail. So even though it might seem like there are a finite number or targets to shoot, many or most of which do not appreciably visibly change in our lifetimes, different magnification, framing, overall duration, and filtering can create an almost endless number of differing results from the same general area of the sky. And that is not even considering the different results that can come from new processing software and techniques, even when reprocessing the same data.
So if you have basically a DSLR and virtually ANY camera lens and can get it on a tracking mount of some kind, you can start to make some very interesting images, even without any sort of a telescope.
ML
This image is NOT one of those, but illustrates that interesting detail can be pulled out at virtually any magnification if you can track the stars and start to stack images together. And then I have included a 2nd image (that I think I may have even already posted once) that also shows the other thing about astroimaging - that you can always render more detail with more magnification, up to the limit of your tracking and seeing anyway.
Here is an image made with an astro modified Canon T2i of the Milky Way crossing overhead down in New Mexico under new moon dark skies. Of particular interest is the small but recognizable shape and color of the North America Nebula...
Shootings details as follows:
Equipment:
Canon 500D (T2i)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Canon 16-35 f/4 L IS, @ f/4, 16mm
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom 4.3
Photoshop CS2
Light Frames:
4 x 180 secs (12 mins)
6 x 240 secs (24 mins)
In case you couldn't make it out, or wanted to start to see some of the detail that comes with more magnbification, Here then (from the same trip) is a natural color image of the 'wall' section of the same North America Nebula, now shot at 580mm instead of 16mm...
Shooting Details:
Equipment:
Canon 550D (astro-modified, clear glass filter)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Light Frames:
14 x 360 secs
2 x 300 secs (1 hr 34 mins)
Dark Frames:
15 x 360 secs (1 hr 30 mins)
Other Frames:
30 Bias
No Flats
It is interesting to note that this is the same mount and same camera, just a different optic, and about 3x longer amount of integrated data for the close up shot. I have seen even higher magnification images that zoom in on just small sections of the 'wall', revealing even more intricate detail. So even though it might seem like there are a finite number or targets to shoot, many or most of which do not appreciably visibly change in our lifetimes, different magnification, framing, overall duration, and filtering can create an almost endless number of differing results from the same general area of the sky. And that is not even considering the different results that can come from new processing software and techniques, even when reprocessing the same data.
So if you have basically a DSLR and virtually ANY camera lens and can get it on a tracking mount of some kind, you can start to make some very interesting images, even without any sort of a telescope.
ML
