A Milky SPSP

[Deeno]

Seeing as we were under a dark truly dark sky, thought I'd have another go at some wide field shots with the D200 and 17mm lens on the non descript German eq mount with RA drive.
Not entirely sure of the details as I've been playing with Deepskystacker all day and dealing with constant heart attacks from the huge RAW files on this poor old computer.

Not entirely satisfied as it still looks noisy.

Pracitise makes perfect........

1 frames at f3.5 iso3600 and 30sec each
1 frames at f3.5 iso1600 and 30sec each
4 frames at f3.5 iso 800 and 2 minutes each
2 frames at f3.5 iso 400 and 4minutes each
+ darks

I think.........

Honest opinions and advice welcome
Thanks for looking

Deeno

[Antu]

Hi Deeno ! Nice image, but could have been pushed more, IMHO.

To be honest given the parameters of the equipment and the data, final result should have been a little better. Especially if you shoot under very dark skies. Try to carefully check you workflow in DSS, play with curves in Photoshop, etc. From my experience even a single exposure of 2-4 min gives one pretty good results.

If you don't mind, could you please put somewhere on the web one or two originals files (in RAW) ? Perhaps we can help you.

[Deeno]

[quote=Antu;313223]Hi Deeno ! Nice image, but could have been pushed more, IMHO.

To be honest given the parameters of the equipment and the data, final result should have been a little better. Especially if you shoot under very dark skies. Try to carefully check you workflow in DSS, play with curves in Photoshop, etc. From my experience even a single exposure of 2-4 min gives one pretty good results.

Thanks Antu

Your right, I was expecting some much better results.
Even with much shorter exposures with my much older 70-200mm but quicker ED lens provides much brighter images.
I haven't used the AF-S 18-70mm before for astro stuff and each image were much darker than expected even though the stars themselves were very prominent.
Perhaps the ED coating on the newer lens filters some of the fainter light out?

Anyway, it’s all a learning experience for a rank novice and gives me plenty to think about for the next attempt.

I've been playing with the lower iso but longer exposure frames and tried to smoothen out the results.

Tips and comments appreciated

Deeno

[Ingo]

White balance is really off. But it's a good image. Needed more stacks and you'd have less noise though. :thumbsup:

[Craig.a.c]

Very nice shot, I love these types of shots of the milky way.
Is the brighter region in the bottom left area looking towards our galatic centre?????