Night Road Run

[bloodhound31]

There were a few clouds about tonight on new moon, but I thought I would take a drive out of the city anyway and let my God lead.

As it turned out, the sky cleared beautifully. I was just driving along the back roads that skirt the mountains and looking for a nice foreground to frame some widefields.

The tracking station seemed the spot to start while the clouds were still about, but after they cleared the hunt was on. I pulled up several times and set the tripod up with the Canon 400D and an 18-55mm kit lens.

Most of the shots were 30 seconds, but I took a heap of the centre of the MW for a reasonable stack in DSS. It made all the difference.

Fun fun fun..

Baz.

[David Fitz-Henr]

Nice one Barry - the centre of the MW looks great (stacking them makes all the difference) ! There was a lot of hazy cloud from meridian to the east here at dusk, but it has cleared up nicely and I will probably stay up quite late collecting photons myself ...

[renormalised]

Nice shots, Baz. Radio Astronomers!!!...trust them to leave the lights on:eyepop::P:P:D:D

[Hagar]

Very Nice Baz, Your wide field shots are comeing up very nicely.
Well done.

[DavidU]

Baz #2 is really good !

Yeh Carl, just get Baz to leave his UHF on transmit in the parking lot:D

[bloodhound31]

Thanks a lot guys. I am really not liking that first one over the Gibraltar rocks there. The more I look at it, the less I like it. I think I might have to do some composite images to get it right. Not real purist, but still dramatic (where photography, astronomy and art all start to blur together.)

If I could get a background stack like the MW centre there, with a few stacks of the mountainside, now that might look pretty sweet.

Baz.

[DavidU]

Baz #1 is a very difficult shot, you need subs as the field rotates while the hills are still. You would need a Uber apature short lens to get that.