Last night was clear again but being a week night, no time for the big stuff. So it was out with the little Nano tracker and tripod to the front yard. What can I see between the trees? Not much but I knew the Large Magellanic Cloud must be up there somewhere because I had seen it from a darker sky the previous weekend.
I could not see it with all the light pollution, until with averted vision, I caught the glimpse of a lightish smudge in an area to the south west of Crux. That must be it, I thought, so I aimed the camera in that direction and took a shot - nothing. Moved it again, took a shot, nothing, then finally success! Part of it was in the frame and now I could make small adjustments to centre it within the frame.
It turned out to be a great challenge at 14km from the Melbourne CBD in the Red Zone and removing gradients to reveal some structure in post processing was tricky but this is what I ended up with.
Full spectrum modded Canon 550d with UV/IR cut filter. 20 x 1 min subs at 800 iso 135mm Pentax lens @ f5.6 on a Sightron Nano Tracker.
Good result Michael. I think about 85mm would give a better sense
of what one is looking at. I've been unable to do any imaging in recent
days[nights] so nothing to report from my nano.
raymo
Mick,
Setting 135mm focal length brought out the tarantula nicely enough and the low ISO makes a difference controlling noise.Raymo makes a good point with widening the field for this target however still revealed an overall nice pic of the LMC. Must be fun to use the nano I'd imagine, quick, light weight and results for this sort of photography does the job well and truly.