a collision of fortunate events…

[chupathingie]

Clear skies for Saturday night…check.
A parking lot full of light-buckets under mag 5+ skies…check.
New moon (ok, a day past)…check.
Lyrids peaking…check.

I’m thinking a decent time to leave the fisheye lens on all night.

[orionid]

*cough* bullshit! *cough*

That’s awesome man. Have a great time. Post the finals, make me jealous.

[chupathingie]

Last time I went out there the local astronomy club was there as well. I gotta say M51 is amazing to look at through a 30″ f4 Dob; 10 foot stepladder and all. I wanna pick a spot that at least gets the lot of scopes up out of the faint edges of the FOV. I gotta look at the charts… find how high up the radiant is gonna get before say 3AM.

[ravnostic]

I’m going out Sunday night; nearly as good conditions (a little warm; noise might be an issue).

[Farktographer]

I’m jealous of all you doing your night photos. I can honestly say I haven’t even seen a star in the past month. Friggin’ cloud cover and light pollution here is just ridiculous. Ditto what orionid said – post the finals so I can be even more jealous.

[ennuipoet]

I’m jealous of all you doing your night photos. I can honestly say I haven’t even seen a star in the past month. Friggin’ cloud cover and light pollution here is just ridiculous. Ditto what orionid said – post the finals so I can be even more jealous.

I thought I saw a star the other night, but the NYPD Chopper turned the spotlight on me…

[Yugoboy]

Looking forward to (finally) being able to do this stuff soon.

[chupathingie]

Oof. What a disaster.

First, the volume of meteors that managed to burn up in our neck of the woods was pretty low. We had 6-7 peeps out there and maybe counted a dozen an hour.

Second, I shot all my fisheyes at ISO3200 with 4 minute subs. I don’t care how good anyone thinks a 5DII is in low light, 3200 is WAY too fast for 4 minutes subs. My darks are very ugly.

Third, by the time the Milky Way started coming up I managed to run off about 15 3-minute subs at ISO1600 of the area just east of and including Antares, but my battery lost it before I could acquire darks. That leaves my one “keeper” for last night washed-out, noisy, and in need of heavy resizing to hide the static and hot pixel stacking artifacts. This is 10% of the original size.

The good news is that I’m pretty excited now to go back out knowing that I need to stick to ISO1600, and maybe purchase a back-up battery to extend my shooting time (or a 12V pack that I can insert in place of a battery and I’ll run off the Jeep). I’m going to be looking for a nice fast prime between 30-50mm as well I think. Recommendations gladly considered. This shot was taken at 70mm/f2.8 with the 70-200mm L.

[fluffybunny]

I’m going to be looking for a nice fast prime between 30-50mm as well I think. Recommendations gladly considered. This shot was taken at 70mm/f2.8 with the 70-200mm L.

I researched the Sigma 30/1.4 pretty extensively about 6 months ago. A lot of high praise and pixel peepers were happy with it, helluva deal if it will do what you want ($450). Never got one but still might someday. I decided I would get more use from a 10-22 3.5/4.5.

Compares nicely to 35/1.4L (slightly softer yes but is it three times the cost softer?):

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=121&Camera=396&FLI=0&API=0&LensComp=405&CameraComp=396&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0

[Farktographer]

Awesome photo plus experience text

Still got an amazing shot, chup. I ran into a problem similar to yours before – that’s why now I always have a spare battery and a couple spare memory cards with me. You live and learn 🙄

I like shooting mine at ISO 200, but then again I’m capturing swirls most of the time – I’d have to calculate how long I could leave my wide-angle open without getting startrails and then calculate what ISO I’d need to get proper exposure. Damn, you guys are making me want to go on a camping trip…

[orionid]

I’d have to calculate how long I could leave my wide-angle open without getting startrails

600 divided by focal length for APS or 35mm.

[chupathingie]

light pollution here is just ridiculous.

Stumbled across this today (fancy site, eh?) while trying to dig up info on sub length vs noise. His top picture looks almost exactly like my first digital astropic, taken in the middle of Dallas/Fort Worth. I had like 38 of them, all 30-sec exposures and a lot of additional details came out after stacking and subtracting out the skyfog; which is going to be a bitch for you I expect if your skies are anything like the light pollution that the 6 million peeps in DFW manage. Even if you don’t have the scratch for filters, you can still battle the LP basically for free with some additional subs or by blurring your original all to hell in a new layer then subtracting it from the original (minimum-focus subs pointed at slightly different parts of the surrounding sky and averaged would be better, tho).

It’s very much a game of collecting good quality image data of what you don’t want, so that you can use it against itself.

[Yugoboy]

Where can I get instructions on stacking for night sky shots? The campus I adjunct at is way out in the middle of nowhere. It’s still subject to some light pollution, but nothing like what I get in my suburban home backyard. First relatively cloud-free Tuesday night will be a longer than usual commute home (even with my usual stopping for night shots).

[chupathingie]

What OS? It can be done both manually and with additional software. The more convenient you want it the more expensive it gets 🙂

[Yugoboy]

Windows XP. PS3. (or GIMP). (or Irfanview).

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