The South Celestial Pole now with long exposure composite image

[gregbradley]

Part of the setup for a time lapse. This is a shot of the South Celestial Pole which is a little bit above the rock.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148275624

Nikon D800E, 14-24mm lens 14mm, 25 secs, ISO6400.

I love these delicate bands of green and reddish magenta in the lower horizons. They move over time and this shows
up in the time lapse. I did not know these effects existed until I started doing DSLR widefield images.

Greg.

[iceman]

Beautiful!

Can't wait to see the timelapse.

Is this out at your dark sky site?

[leon]

Awesome stuff Greg, I do love those widefields.

Leon

[h0ughy]

its a great shot but man i havent seen as much noise since the last rock concert i went to. must have been a very warm evening indeed. i like your composition

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike. Yes it is.



Thanks Leon. I like em too.



Yes looking at it again you're right. Time for a repro! Perhaps I should turn on high ISO noise reduction as well in the camera in summer.

Updaate: I reprocessed it in Lightroom and noise control there works a treat.

Greg.

[Lester]

Very nice image Greg. I have read somewhere that the air glow colours are linked to aurora. All the best.

[Deeno]

Lovely shot!

[Larryp]

Great image!

[RickS]

Nice image, Greg! Where did you take it?

[gregbradley]

Yes it has that look to it. Like ionised something that moves around in the atmosphere. They move like clouds in time lapses. I took some more of this area last night with the Polarie and longer exposures. I'll post them later once processed.


Cheers Deeno.



My dark site observatory 80kms from Cowra. Almost no light pollution and often clear thanks to the Great Dividing Range. Sometimes windy though.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I did a longer exposure version of the same area last night. 2 minutes with Polarie tracking and 2 minutes without for the foreground.

So this is a composite image with the foreground being the first shot and the sky from the same spot the second. I wanted to highlight the delicate hues of colours that are very faint in our skies. These must be some sort of radiation effect and are not normally noticed except a strange green bias in a long exposure astro image.

120 seconds each, D800E, 14-24mm F2.8 lens:

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/148287184

Greg.

[naskies]

Very nice, Greg! Here's a great article about airglow (posted in an older thread (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=93643)):

http://www.auroranightglow.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/night-glow.html

In short, yellow = sodium, red = atomic oxygen, green = molecular oxygen and nitrogen, blue = molecular oxygen.

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that Dave.

Its an interesting aspect of the night sky.

Greg.

[astronobob]

Dam Niiice Capturing & processing Greg, Top Stuff ! !

[gregbradley]

Thanks Bob.
I am enjoying getting the DSLR out plus this camera is picking up skyglow that previous DSLRs I have used did not. So that is an added incentive.

Greg.

[iceman]

Love the composite, Greg. Beautiful colours in the sky.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike. I am enjoying this form of astrophotography. You feel very connected to the night sky and the environment taking these types of shots.

Greg.

[midnight]

Lovelly work Greg. Makes me want to get in the van and head east into some darker skies and camp for a day or three.

Darrin...

[naskies]

I think this is a very good point! There's not much setting up needed with the DSLR before you can just sit back, look up, and enjoy the view.

As a bonus, you get to see a lot of transient events like meteors. I was out shooting last night and saw a bright meteor streak over about 100 degrees of the sky, with dust/smoke trailing for about 3 degrees behind. Would have completely missed it if I were staring into my laptop screen!

[Paul Haese]

Hmmm nice colours Greg, but I believe the composition is wrong. I think it would be better to place the rocks either to the far right or far left and wait for the Milkway to be tilted over further. The composition as it stands looks awkard to me and too contrived.

Looks to be a great site there but using the rule of threes in composition will help quite a lot.

Just my opinion though and I am sure one or two others might think so too. :)

[gregbradley]

Thanks Darrin. It certainly is a realxing way to spend an evening.



Yes that's right. I find meteors are quite common in a really dark site.




Yes its a little awkward. I was really setting up for a time lapse and the intended target was to have the SCP above the rock so it was a better composition for that. In the time lapse it worked really well. But I see your point and I was aware of that too. But in the end I felt it worked well enough to warrant its own still image.
I have 2 time lapses of this area. One worked really well using the Polarie as a panning tool. It panned at the same rate as the Milky Way was rising so that is a great effect. I think I need to turn off long exposure noise reduction though as the time lapse is bit shorter than I would like.

The time lapse is also somewhat informative as you can see easily where the SCP is making polar alignments a bit easier and quicker to do.

Next time I shoot that I will.

Greg.