Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I thought I'd try to get a pic of the Milky Way tonight, but the sky was a bit overcastin Southern N.J. I figured as long as I had my tripod and camera set up on my back deck I might as well try a time exposure of the dozen or so stars I could see peeking through the bare trees.

I set my Nikon D7000 to iso-100 for a 15 second time exposure. I set my f1.4 50mm Nikkor-S film lens to infinity and f2. I used the 10 second timer to minimize camera shake.

I then processed the raw file in Photoshop, playing with exposure, temperature, tint, black and white clip, gamma, shadows, highlights, midtones and saturation.

The result is that Photoshop and my camera sensor brought out hundreds of stars not visible to the naked eye. No Milky Way but lots of stars.

(Download)

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

The main portion of the MilkyWay is really not too visible this time of year. The densest part has been moving farther and farther west and is now below the horizon by sunset. There is still a swath of stars extending across the sky continuing through the constellation Cassiopeia towards the Northeast. It can be photographed with the correct setup. But it is not what you can see during the summer months.

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

Really nice work Bob you are coming right along.
Craig

hettmoe Loc: Rural ND

Cool. It looks to me like you had a good time. It's all about learning and having a good time while doing so....😀

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Nice Bob!

I'm always surprised and pleased at the things the camera catches that we often miss.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Stellarium just showed the top part of the Milky Way to extend to about 20-30 degrees above the horizon at about 10:30PM. When is a good time of year for it to extend fully into the night sky? I'm in Southern N.J. Thanks.
Bob

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Thanks Sonny. I was surprised that there were miniature star trails in just 15 seconds of exposure.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Thank you Craig.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Late summer is ideal. When the star Altair is high in the sky, the MilkyWay is right there with it. Find a dark spot and have some fun.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

You are also seeing some blooming. Some lenses and some sensors are more susceptible to this problem. In the case of a sensor, the pixel is holding all the charge it possibly can hold and that charge tends to bleed to surrounding neighbors. And I might add, that many CCD's used for Astrophotography have a feature known as Deblooming where a conductive mask is placed over the array of sensors and the effect is to provide a place for excess buildup to go should a pixel have too much charge, and in this way, the neighboring pixels aren't affected. For example, they may advertise 1000x deblooming. The downside is that this mask tends to block a little bit of the light. But since you are not blooming, you can also expose longer too.

And for some other reasons, certain lenses tend to spread the light around to neighboring pixels causing the same problem. In the case of the lens, this is most likely some chromatic aberration distortion when different colors of light bend differently and cause those colors to focus at different spots. Older lenses were worse at this with many newer ones now having superior coatings that had not yet been invented yet when the older lenses were new.

But not all older lenses have this problem. Some have such good glass, that they can do it even without benefit of newer coatings. I have several, and they are a joy to use. And I might also add that dedicated macro capable lenses tend to be very good at this. The macro lens tend to be designed with exceptionable glass and can really do well with stars.

Good luck with your efforts.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Thanks for the info. I have a Micro-NIKKOR-P 55mm f3.5 macro lens, I can try. Downside is I haven't AIS'd this lens like I did the 50mm f1.4, and so I will try it on my D3100 instead of the D7000. Other doewnside is it only goes down to f3.5.
Bob

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

That sounds good. I bet that lens will provide much better star images. Practice aiming at Polaris. The stars near Polaris move much slower and you can try out somewhat longer exposures. A good place to give it a try for the first time.

dlmorris Loc: Loma Linda, Ca

The Milky Way is pretty much done for at this time of year, but the constellation of Orion is rising, and makes a good distinctive pattern as it rises above the horizon. In fact, any shot with some horizon scenery with the stars in the background can be very interesting. You have a good start!

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Thank you.