Last night, I thought I’d try a little experiment.
I wanted to see what kind of photo I could get of the Orion nebula, without a telescope or tracker.
The following image was a 1 second exposure, because anything longer caused significant star trailing. The lens I used was not particularly fast (600mm, f/6.3), so I had to crank the ISO to 12,800 to get much of an image. But - it’s not terrible:
Not terrible indeed!
“Not terrible” is one way to put it.
Wow, is that true color (or at least, color as seen by a sensor designed to mimic the human eye’s response, as used on most cameras)?
And if that’s what you can get from a single one-second exposure, think of what you could get from frame-stacking!
Yes. I increased the saturation a bit.
It’s slight overcast today. If it clears up tonight, I’ll reduce the exposure time to 1/2 second, and take a sequence and stack them.
The sky cleared up nicely, so I set up again, and took 99 images at 1/2 second, ISO 25,600 (!).
I stacked them using Starry Landscape Stacker, then adjusted the composite in Luminar Neo:
For reference, a single frame looked like this:
Before I packed up, I took a shot of the Moon:
Those are fantastic.
Yes, these are pretty cool.
I know this is an old post, but I once saw a rainbow in the due north. I was in the St. Louis area during the winter, and it was a warm day and it had rained.
Today, I saw my first dandelion.
I finally saw and heard some robins today!
Spent a couple of hours this morning on the Hunting Hollow Trail in Henry Coe State Park. A nice 5-mile stroll through a narrow valley bordered by rolling foothills with numerous stream crossings. Very peaceful and very green.
I saw this antler-less Moose today:
Ah, they shed them. I did not know that.
Here you go:
Interesting that they both fell off at the same time. Probably evolved to happen that way, because only one would be unbalancing.
I wonder if they itch when they’re just about to fall off?
Not really sure if this is “nature” or not:
I didn’t get a good picture, but yesterday I saw the First Robin Of Spring. 
Living in Texas for so long, where robins overwinter (and get drunk on fermenting berries) seeing them in early spring was absolutely no big deal, but having moved to the frozen tundra western Mitten State, that 1st sighting actually means something now!
Also, daffodils starting to bloom where there were bare spots just a few days ago.
Ooh - reminds me. The hummingbirds will be showing up soon. I need to make some nectar and put the feeders out. Hummingbird Thunderdome is always fun to watch.
Who knew beings so tiny could be such huge assoles?