I second your granddaughter's opinion about the colors especially the contrasty red.

The odd groupings of white dot artifacts are interesting. Each group is identical with regard to the number and location of the dots relative to each other. The groupings however, appear to be completely random in their locations in the image. Since you were able to get rid of the artifacts using noise reduction through the camera, this suggests that a good set of dark calibration frames will solve the problem as previously mentioned.

Just as an FYI and FWIW, I saw something in your image that I saw in an image I was working on the other day. I noticed most of the smaller stars in my image exhibited a tear-drop shape. I went back through the original individual light frames and examined them more carefully than I had done prior to the original stacking. I found the smaller stars in several of lights were quite elongated, whereas the larger stars looked perfectly acceptable. It seems the larger stars camouflaged a tracking error in those bad lights. Once I removed the bad lights, the stars were all nice and round.

I have to say I'm so jealous of your dark skies, or access to them. Light pollution on the west coast of Florida is getting worse by the week with all the building going on.

I do deep space astroimaging and just love how different the view is from your backyard. I've never seen a photo of the Southern Lights so thanks so much for sharing. The reds you saw/captured were just magnificent and incomparable to the red I saw the only time I've whitnessed the Northern Lights when I lived in Michigan. I have aurora envy and so pleased you happened to be in the right place at the right time. Nice job.

I have a Mantus rechargeable marine head-light. It's rugged and waterproof to 10 m and has 4 modes: red, low white, high white and SOS. It's extremely well made and I get about 12 - 14 hours out of a charge. However, I think it will set you back $80 rather than $50. https://onboard-rigging.myshopify.com/products/mantus-head-light

Colorful little "bugger".

I am so jealous of your shots! I've captured many meteors while imaging DSO's but never when I purposely have gone after them.

The best shower I've ever seen was the 2014 Geminid's. During the time I watched them, the rate was 1.3/hr. This was from my backyard in Cary, NC. A bit earlier that night, I went out the lake (reasonably dark skies) to photograph the shower but got absolutely nothing. I packed up the equipment, headed back home to take a last soak in the hot tub; we were relocating to Sarasota the next morning. While sitting and relaxing in the tub and listening to the snorting of the deer at the edge of the woods telling us to get lost, it started raining Geminids.

This year's Geminids were second best. I was outside before the sun went down setting up a completely new rig and having problems with everything. It was a gorgeous clear night and thought I'd wait until the radiant was at a reasonable altitude before setting up to shoot the meteors. Just after moonrise, which was about 10:30 pm and for the next hour and a half, it seemed that every time I looked up from the new rig, I saw a moderately bright to bright meteor...11 in all. I was in the house for roughly 30 min getting the meteor equipment, came out about 12:30 and was greeted by a wet soggy fog that rolled in and stayed cloudy the rest of the night. Again, no meteor photos.

Since arriving in Sarasota, this week's Geminids is the one and only major meteor shower I've had at least some clear skies to view. For astro-work, the weather here, sucks as does the light pollution and my neighbor's yard decorated with so much inflatable "Holiday Cheer" and LED lights, it looks like he's expecting 787's to land.

Your color is really, really good. I'm jealous. The detail in the download is pretty amazing. Just curious if you've tried either of the Canon extenders? Thanks for sharing.

Jay

One more than me! Congrats! I'm jealous.

Jay

This image is striking, stunning and quite special with it's 3D effect without being a 3D image. I've not seen an interpretation like this before. You should strongly consider submitting it to APOD if you've not already done so. Just great work. Thanks for sharing.

Jay

Thanks very much for the techie info. My interest in the information relates to my Canon version of the lens you used where coma is a problem. Sure I can stop it down but that starts introducing other concerns. Trade-offs are a fact-of-life. My desire to see the download is for the same reason...curious about coma and star shape vs exposure length.

I've only uploaded an image on here a couple times and followed the instructions as given at the bottom of this page. Click on "Choose File", then select the file you want to upload from your browser. You should see the file name next to the "Choose File" button. Click the check box "store original" and then click "Add Attachment". Wait for the image to appear onscreen before clicking "send". I just tried it but the file I selected was >20 MB, which is the size limit.

If you want to capture HA but not modify your camera there are HA filters (clip in or screw on) available at various band widths: e.g 3, 5, 7, 12 nm. Cost is inversely proportional to band width: 3 nm >>> 12 nm. Since you are collecting specific wavelengths of light, less light passes through the filter, which means exposures need to be significantly longer (3 - 5 minute range for a 12 nm filter).

Trackers are great! You can do a lot with one. I started down the astroimaging pathway doing Milky Way photos and was bitten by the deep sky object imaging bug. I've since graduated to a moderate arsenal of 3 trackers, 4 telescopes, 2 mounts, 2 DSLR, 2 cooled astrocams....as it keeps going, the investment keeps building.

Good luck as you continue to probe this type of imaging and keep showing your images here!

Jay

Love your image and would love to see it in download.

I'd be really interested if you'd share, information about the camera, lens, tracker (if used) and exposure settings.

The following is an aside for you if you're not familiar or for anyone who may be interested.

An astro modified camera that detects significantly more red light than a normal camera can add significant detail to Milky Way images. Cameras are made to mimic what the eye can see. Our eyes are not very sensitive to red light so a camera captures only 12 - 15% of the available red light. Hydrogen being the most abundant element throughout the universe, emits red light when energetically excited by radiation. This light at 652 nm is referred to as hydrogen alpha (Ha). Emission nebulae are nebula associated with high concentrations of hydrogen that emit much of their light in the Ha region of the spectrum. The Milky Way contains vast areas of Ha that are not picked up by regular cameras. Regular cameras have a UV/IR filter in front of the sensor that blocks most of the Ha. By using an astro-modified camera, where the UV/IR filter is removed, significantly more red light can be gathered by the sensor. The final image will have enhanced detail and significantly more red color showing the emission nebulae of the Milky Way.

Jay

AKA the simplest math problem (3x +1) that's never been proven.

Jay

Rock Chalk!

I do deep space astrophotography and capture unwanted satellites and planes all the time. I also shoot meteor showers so I can't imagine that the settings I use would be significantly different from what you might use.

Your objective should be to get a photo that shows a dark gray to black sky, the rocket tail and maybe some stars. You should not worry at all about the foreground. You can take an appropriate photo of the foreground after you get the money shot and combine them in post. If you try to worry about the foreground and the rocket, it's way too much to think about and likely you won't get anything.

A tripod is a requirement.

Shooting in RAW is a requirement.

An auto shutter release is necessary but a timer on the camera will work. Set the timer so that the camera fires at least 2 seconds after the shutter releaser button is pushed.

Use a wide angle lens in the range of 24 mm. Very important if you don't know exactly where to point your camera.

Chose a site that has a great view of the horizon (hilltop is best). The site should be free from direct interference by light sources.

For the f-stop, stop down 2 f-stops from were the aperture is wide open.

ISO should be set at 800 but likely will need adjustment (see below).

Focusing is critically important; you can recover a lot in a photograph but you can't recover a bad focus.

Manual focus only. The infinity setting on a lens doesn't mean its in focus at infinity.

There are a couple of options for manual focusing:

One is by prefocusing on a very distant object while it's still light out. Once you achieve focus, use masking tape to tape the focus ring so it won't move. It's important to recheck your focus once you've taped the ring.

The other is wait until its dark and focus on the brightest star you can find. To focus, turn on "live view" set the maximum magnification. Starting with the lens set on infinity, very gently turn the focus ring until the star is at its smallest. Go past what you think is smallest and then come back the other way. Do this a few times so you're comfortable the star is at its smaller. Take a test shot that is 2 - 3 seconds long and view at maximum magnification. The star should appear as a pin point of light. If its not, try again. You could also tape the focus ring for this method, depending on if the camera will be moved. Always recheck the focus.

At your site, get the camera set up just as you will be using it to capture the rocket trail. Get sharp focus by one of the methods described above of another of your choosing (NO AUTOFOCUS). Do test shots with the f-stop as discussed above, set for a 40s exposure at 800 ISO. If you don't have stars in that field of view, move the camera so stars are visible in the field of view (this is for test shots only). Do your test shots (40s). As described above your test shots should show a very dark gray to black sky with the stars as pinpoints of light. It is likely you'll have to adjust your ISO to achieve this but that should be the only setting you'll need to adjust. If you can achieve this, you can achieve the money shot. Move your camera back into position for the rocket shot and good luck

Again, get the rocket and edit the foreground in later

Hope this helps.

Jay

Late comment on the Horsehead/Flame shot...I like it a lot, super nice job. Thanks for sharing.

I do have one question tho...how near Atlanta do you find Bortle 4 skies?! I miss Atlanta but not the traffic.

Thanks!

Jay

I just noticed you're from The Villages...we're almost neighbors. I'm from Sarasota.

Best wishes,

Jay