[DISCLAIMER: If you know me on Facebook you have probably already seen these.]
As some of you may remember, I was looking for a new camera last summer and eventually settled on a Nikon D5600, which is generally considered a good entry level DSLR for the serious amateur. What with one thing or another, I never got around to it before, but recently I’ve started shooting the night sky. I have no equatorial mount, drive, or telescope, so these are from just the camera and the basic “daily driver” 18-55mm lens that the camera came with.
Region between Cancer, Leo, and Canis MInor inclusive. The Praesepe (‘Beehive’) star cluster is visible near the middle of the top margin:
For all of these photos, I had to do extensive post processing. Still, considering that they were taken from a typically light-polluted suburban location, I’m amazed at the number of stars that show up here, including numerous 6th magnitude stars. The high ISO required means there’s a lot of noise in the color and texture of the background sky, but when I have a chance to try this under a darker sky it should be better.
From the same location, with the unaided eye I would hardly be able to see any of these stars For instance, I’m lucky if I can see the seven bright stars in Orion.
What were your camera settings (ISO, focal length, SS, aperture)?
I have some similar shots from my own back yard, complete with the bright foliage. Like you, I was impressed by the number of stars. It was neat to see how many stars could be resolved by the camera on a New Jersey summer evening.
Why not try for a number of long exposures and make a composite with the stars going in circles around Polaris–that is a particularly cool one because it illustrates the motion of the earth from one’s humble back yard.
Somewhere I have one “spinning earth” shot that I did as a really long exposure, but I believe these days the cool kids just do it as a series of shorter exposures and stack them, minimizing the noise.
You can see the settings in a Flickr album here, where I have also included the original JPEG files from the camera. If I had realized that individually shared photos aren’t provided with the camera data, I would have just shared the album to begin with.
The latter are included primarily to demonstrate approximately how the night sky really looks to the naked eye, but also the fact that if you zoom in you can see how many stars really do get picked up in the image. On the other hand, the long exposures or high ISOs needed produce weird sky colors, image noise, or both. At this point it’s mainly a question of finding the best compromise.
As for the stacking technique, that would be useful for astro pictures generally. Tools like Photoshop and GIMP make it possible to split out just the stars for each exposure and then superimpose them on the original image. The later images of stars can be rotated or shifted clockwise (if memory serves) to obtain a brighter image of the stars.
Meanwhile, I’ve already made some good images of passing auto lights and carnival rides; here’s another album of a (very) local Fall carnival from last year.
BTW I managed to make it to a location that has a dark sky, about eleven miles distant from and nearly 3000 feet above my home.
Since I didn’t know the opportunity was going to arise I didn’t have my tripod with me, so I had to be content to prop the camera up against my windshield, or to simply rest it on the car roof. I wasn’t looking for star trains, but just better sky images. I have about a half-dozen exposures for each image which I plan to try stacking in the near future, but for now I have to limit myself to just color/contrast enhancement. I’m surprised and a bit disappointed that I still get the mottled noisy sky through post-processing, but think the stacking will allow me to leave the background sky untouched.
Not that it matters, most likely, but FTR I was misreading Google Earth, and mistook the eye altitude number for the terrestrial elevation. So the elevation where I took tonight’s photos is only about 2000’ above sea level and not 3300 like I thought.
If you are getting into amateur astronomy, you should try out (free trial; about $50 for the full package) BACKYARD NIKON from otelescope.com.
With a USB cable, this app allows you to remotely control most of the functions of your Nikon, and also lets you set up photo programs with various different exposures, f-stops, ASA, etc.
Also, check out the digital camera forums at cloudynights.com. These are a gold mine for tips, how-to-do, etc.
Dark skies, a good tripod and a lawn chair and you are in business.
I was planning to get a remote shutter release anyway.
My camera is supposed to support something called Snapbridge, which would enable not only remote control but also wireless transfer to my Android phone, but it’s proved to be extremely balky.
I didn’t colorize it, but I suspect that it probably doesn’t appear lavender to the naked eye. When I get home from the Ragnar, I’ll post one of the individual frames, and maybe we can figure out what star it is.
If your camera supports RAW formats, by all means try these. These files are bigger than JPGs but contain much more native data and are ideal for more post-processing.
I used Stellarium set for the correct date and time, and I’m 99% sure that the lavender star is Vega. It’s so bright that it caused “purple fringing” on the 20mm lens I was using, which is why is appears the way is does in the stack. Here is a closeup of the first frame in the series:
