Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I took a drive late last night, looking for relatively dark sites. My first stop was a large convention/banquet center, about 5 miles away. It's on the south side of the road, and I wasn't sure if they left their lights on all night. Well, the parking lot lights are off, and the place itself is pretty dark, but I81 runs about half a mile to the south, and the sky pollution was just horrendous. I set up and tried a few shots, but anything to the south was rubbish. Using the settings suggested by the literature, my photo looked like it was taken in daylight!

Next place on the list was a parking lot which is just off the road on the way up South Mountain - it's in one of the state forests, but I can't remember which one. I actually missed the turning first time and went all the way up the mountain, then had to turn and come back to find it. Parked the car, climbed out and looked up... Wow! The stars were poking me in the eye! This was around 12:30 this morning, and I could just see the northern end of the MW, with naked eyes!

There is no horizon... It's surrounded by trees, but there is a 'notch' in the tree line to the south, and I set up to try it out. I was there until after 3:30, which tells you that I thought I was getting something. The problem (maybe) was focus... No matter what I tried, I couldn't see anything on the LCD at all. So, I fudged it. The stuff I was getting looked great on the screen, but there is a distinct possibility that everything is blurred beyond redemption... I haven't had the guts to download and check the stuff yet!

On the way home, I stopped at Wallmart and did my grocery shopping! Never have I even imagined going to the store at 3:30 in the morning... I was the only customer in the store, as far as I can tell. Certainly beats the usual rush - although I had to go hunt a cashier to check my stuff out!

Anyway, getting to bed at close to 4:30 has me somewhat jetlagged... I need to get myself together, then plug the camera in and see just what I actually got. If there is anything worth looking at, I will post it forthwith!

Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

Sounds to me like a great place to start that sounds close to the house to boot.
Look forward to seeing what you capture there.
What were you shooting with? Telescopes can be tough to focus and I usually have to really way and I mean way over expose to get something I can focus on. Then I drop the exposure back down to what I am going to shoot.
Crossing my fingers for you.
;)

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

They are loading into LR as we speak... Then I have to figure out just how to PP them!

I guess the second site is about 10 miles away, if I don't miss it while driving up the mountain! I go past it 4 times a day on my bus, but that is in daylight, at least this time of year. It's a gravel parking lot, and is only about 20 feet off the road. This may be a problem earlier in the evening, but in the close to 3 hours I was there, there was only a single car went past. I then saw one more when I was driving back down the mountain.

I don't have a scope. This is all just my trusty T4i stuck on a tripod. Some were with my new EFS 10-18mm, and some were with a Vivitar 28mm f2.5 which I grabbed on eBay, with an adapter. The vivitar gives me an extra 1.5 stops, so I can cut down the ISO a bit, but I love the reach and scope of the zoom at 10mm!

I tried boosting the ISO all the way up to get something to focus on, but all I could see was noise. I tried several times, but could never see a single star on the screen, even zoomed in to 10x. I figured that the vivitar is a simpler design, so I pretty much just turned the focus all the way, and that seemed to work pretty well. With the zoom, well, at 10mm how far off could it be?

Ok, here are a few examples... These are SOOC, just imported into LR, converted to DNG and exported to jpeg.
I would welcome any PP suggestions.

Oh, I also tried my hand at 'light painting' the trees with a flashlight in some of them...

(Download)


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Sagitarius (sp?) just poking its head above the trees

(Download)

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

Phil I hope you don't mind I took #1 and ran it through LR and raised the contrast & clarity. Then lowered the black level.
There is noise in the shot but that's what happens at ISO 6400 in a crop sensor camera.
Do you have a lens that will go any lower on the f/stop. Do you have a prime 20mm to 35mm?
I am going to shoot with a Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 and a 20mm f/2.8 at ISO 800 and use LR to pull out the stars and not the light pollution.
Focus is always an issue. Your stars are pretty round so I think you did a good job.
Craig

Just a few quick adjustments in Lightroom

(Download)

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

Heh heh... you "have something" all right. And it's incurable and ultimately destructive to your savings.

There are support groups though.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

The second one above was taken with a vivitar 28mm f2.5 prime lens. Of course, the crop factor takes it to around 35 or so. That is the only w/a I have with a bigger aperture. I do have a 50mm 1.8, but with an effective length of 80mm, that is not going to cut it for the MW.

I tried some at different ISO settings/speed combinations. Maybe some of those will not be as noisy. Shooting at 10mm, I should have a fair leeway before streaking becomes an issue.

I will be playing with the whole PP side of it in the next few days. Maybe it will be worth investing in one of the better de-noising programs, once the finances will allow.

Another thing I want to try, is a timelapse of the MW wheeling across the sky. Of course, with exposures of 15 or 20 seconds, it is going to take hours to get enough shots to make a video. Not that I need to worry about that for a while, though. The clouds have already rolled back in - they were starting to when I finished shooting last night - and we are forecast for another wet and cloudy week.

Thanks for the comments...

hettmoe Loc: Rural ND

Yes, thankfully, there are....
I'm happy for you, Phil. You are going to have fun!

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Turn your ISO way up high while you are focusing. I do this and see many stars. I pick a fainter star to focus on since the bright ones tend to bloom into something larger.

Also make sure the your f-stop is wide open.

And did you get you new eBay lens? Try some infinity daytime shots just to get a feel for how close to the stop it is. Also make note of how sensitive it is to the focus point. You will need to pick a distant object with good contrast to practice on. If you camera has focus magnifier, use it. Take some test shots and see how accurate you focus was. Expand it to max magnification to verify it is really in good focus.

A good target to use for this might be a distant tower or building with so detail that has goog contrast. Just something that makes a good sharp target. Trees are not good targets -- too broad.

Good luck

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I tried turning up the ISO, but it didn't show any stars, just got noisier and noisier. There were some pretty bright stars up there, but I couldn't see them on the screen even at max ISO.

Yes, I got that lens. That is the vivitar 28mm 2.5 I used for #2 above. Even at that wide-open (which is where it stayed), I couldn't see anything on the screen. I stuck it all the way to infinity, figuring that a simple prime shouldn't have as many issues as a complex w/a zoom, and it seems to have been close enough.

The magnifier worked well for me last time, when I had the moon and venus to play with. This time, I didn't get anything to magnify...

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

You are still a good candidate for "pre-focusing" your lenses on infinity and making some kind of registration marks so you can repeat it... or get really close.

I got all excited because I have to go to my nephew's wedding at the end of the month in Rancho Mirage of all places (Who has a "garden" wedding in the desert in June anyway???? It's over 100.) and thought I would haul my camera and tripod down there and take a drive east about 50 miles or so on 10 where it's really, really dark but then I checked and the moon is only a couple of days past full...

Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

Try Venus or Jupiter. Then you should be able to see them and focus on them to get what you are after. I use them all the time with the telescope because the others are soo hard to see.
Do you have an Iphone or an Android? Celestron has an app for either of these that is really nice and has a lot of features including a listing of interesting objects viewable for you at the time you are running it. Its free and really helpful.
Just a thought.
You are off to a great start and be careful, it can be addictive.
;)

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I have an android phone, but it was sitting on top of my PC at the time... I had checked stellarium, and Saturn should have been up there. Also, I could see and identify Antares, but not Jupiter or venus. Turning my ISO up all the way, I could not see *any* objects on my LCD screen, just more and more noise as I turned it up. I don't know why not, since it *had* worked with Venus the last time out. All I could see was blue and red mush. I was using a 10mm lens, so I should have been able to see any star in almost the whole visible sky at the time...

I have some decent shots of Cygnus, so Deneb should have been visible too. Toward the end, Sagittarius was showing nicely above the trees. It shows well in some of the pics, although I am not sure if I was still messing with focus at that point. I think I had just given up, said "to heck with it" and continued because I was having a good time. I knew there was a distinct chance I would have nothing to show for it, but I was still having a blast. I am not a late-night owl, so for me to be standing in that parking lot until almost 3:30 means something! I only stopped then because the clouds were coming in... I have some at the end where Sagittarius is looking good, but there are only a few patches of MW visible through a layer of clouds. Unfortunately, right at the bottom of the mountain, dead south from where I was shooting, is the big wallmart store, which has more lights in the parking lot than NASA. Any significant haze, and it just reflects those lights straight back to me. When it was clear earlier, though, as you have seen, there was no problem.

Actually, now that I think of it, I do have an astro ap on my phone. Can't remember what it is called. As I said, though, it was sitting here at home... I got really nervous at one point, driving along a forestry trail trying to find a clearing. I realized that if the car broke, I was really in trouble without my phone... *sigh*

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Looks like you will need to find infinity in the daylight and tape the lens at that point and be carefull you don't bump it.

Sorry you can't live focus on the stars.

chazz4623 Loc: Prairieville, La

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: As an insomniac, I commend you for doing something constructive with the time. The shots look quite good (to me anyway).

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

You are getting it. Next, some experimenting with SW and with stacking to make it even better.