Who needs dark skies?

[Steve_C]

Folks,

Just playing around, nothing special, to see what can be done. Taken from my home in NW Sydney last night, Blacktown area, definitely not a dark sky area. 24mm f2.8 lens, f4@15s, ISO 3200, D300 untracked.

Heavily post processed to bring out detail. If you look you can see my TV aerial on the left, and about 1/3 down near the centre I think that is one of the Magellanic clouds. It is about the right position and colour.

Definitley no hot pixels, I have checked my camera to make sure.

Weather permitting, tomorrow night I'll try and do the same for the Milky Way around the Southern Cross.

How did I do this? Apart from post processing, I made sure the histogram was exposed as far right as possible, to give me a lot of light to work with.

Regards,

Steve

[bobbyf]

Hi Steve
I think it's more likely to be a reflection than the LMC or SMC. I have seen similar types of blue colours appearing in some of my images.
I think the magellenic clouds appear greyer with a widefield DSLR shot.
What time was it when you took the shot, and do you know what direction?
You can check on sky safari or similar apps to find out where it is, if you know the time and general direction.
Cheers

Bob
Your settings seem OK by the way. Maybe try F3.2, depending on how much false colour and coma is produced. Have you tried 20 secs? Do you start to see movement then?

[Steve_C]

You could be right, Bob. Re colour, it has been heavily processed, that might account for the colour shift. I did put fair amount of blue in to make the sky more of a midnight blue. I have attached the orig raw file unprocesssed so you can see what I worked with. I did try other f stops, but they over exposed due to the amount of light pollution.

Az was appr just E of S, el appr 30deg, @ 21:15, right where the SMC should be, even though I could not see it with the naked eye. The Sth cross is just out of view to the right. I also thought it may be lens flare, but AFIK there was no light falling on the lens. I plan on trying again tonight, but it may be too cold or too much smoke from backburning around Sydney ATM.

I ran out of time to try diff shutter speeds, but from past experience 15 sec is about right for that lens on that camera. 20 sec will give movement.

I use Stellarium.

Steve