Mickoid
16-03-2018, 10:50 PM
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.
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.