Sirius, Orion & no asteroid :-( C&C

ImagenEstilo

I don't get much of a chance to get out photographing landscapes etc but I managed to get a pass out last night. I took a spin up to the Observatorio de Torcal. It's near a little town called Antequera in Andalucia. There were a rake of people out with the strangest of contraptions looking for that asteroid, I mean crazy stuff. This dude had stuff that looked like it was straight out of a Mission Impossible movie.

Anyway, the whole "photographing the stars" subject just fascinates me and is something I plan to get into when the little one starts getting a bit older. At the moment it's a no go. Last night we had a fairly bright moon so I was limited in terms of visibility. I thought I'd share a wee photo. On a personal level, I love the color in it. The extreme right and left weren't painted with my maglite enough but sure it's a learning game. This is more or less my first outing doing this type of stuff so go easy on me.



You can see Orion, Beetlegeuse, Sirius and a few other stars that I can't remember. That glow at the end of the path is Malaga, which is about 50k away.

I can see how easy it is to immerse yourself in this type of stuff. I picked up Phil Hart's ebook and it is just immense the type of images you can capture with a camera alone. I can only imagine what would happen when you hook your camera up to a good telescope.

dirtyghettokid

the colours are beautiful!

jasonb

Excellent photo, just crying out to be your PC wallpaper...

J.

fret_wimp2

That's an awesome photo. I really want to get a nice landscape with some of the starry night sky or even better, a winter view of the Milky Way but have not gotten/made th opportunity just yet. Very envious of thi image!

refusetolose

cool pic

might want to post it in the new astrophography forum too

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1578

ImagenEstilo

Thanks guys. I appreciate the comments.

I've updated my own Blog with a few more images and a little write up on what I did in terms of technique etc. I'm always on the lookout for improvements so if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve technique then let me know. I've uploaded the above image in full resolution so you can download it if you like. It's a D800 converted RAW file so is rather large even for a jpg. I think it is about 16MB. There is another identical image on the blog but the colour tint is set differently (colour balance is still 4200 kelvin). It would be interesting to see which one people prefer. For me it is the above image.

I have the astro forum on my forum list, I will definitely post the image on it.

I can see why some photographers just get immersed in this type of photography. It is very rewarding. It's also such a great break from the normal portraity stuff that I do.

Thanks again everyone.
Dave

Merrion

ImagenEstilo wrote: »

I can only imagine what would happen when you hook your camera up to a good telescope.

In my case I nearly got frostbite trying to focus the darned thing!

moon by Merrion, on Flickr

ImagenEstilo

I spotted a couple of these moon shots in the astro forum. They are lovely.

Jaysus, talking about feeling out of your depth, some of the guys in that forum might as well be speaking in another language with the terms they are using. I was thinking, "ah sure it is all photography". Was I wrong!!

I'm going to take a pic of the moon with my D800 and 200mm zoom when I get a chance. OK, it aint much of a zoom but with the bare camera and lens (ie no telescope) it would be interesting to see how it would compare to the above image! I reckon I could go head to head :-P

I think I will put TRUE astrophotography on the long finger, sounds like you need another rake load of gear and lots of time on your hands to get up that learning curve. At the moment I have neither :-(

dirtyghettokid

ImagenEstilo wrote: »

Jaysus, talking about feeling out of your depth, some of the guys in that forum might as well be speaking in another language with the terms they are using. I was thinking, "ah sure it is all photography". Was I wrong!!
...

I think I will put TRUE astrophotography on the long finger, sounds like you need another rake load of gear and lots of time on your hands to get up that learning curve. At the moment I have neither :-(

i thought the same! and the software they all seem to use only works on windows platform
some amazing stuff, but a bit time consuming to create! fair play to them! i'd rather be in my bed sleeping all night :P

Merrion

You have until January 2014 before all these moon shots are all replaced with spectacular comet photos.

(I have until then to work out how to program my telescope...and, yes, I am a computer programmer but it doesn't help - the maths involved breaks my head)