Peering into the heart of the constellation Scorpius near the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy, one is greeted with a more intimate view of the complexities of our neighbourhood. We see a mixture of dark dust lanes, vast clouds of interstellar matter, fine mists of countless stars and colourful emission and reflection nebula.
From another trip last night to the mountains near Canberra, (two this week...zzzz :wired: ) this is a stack of 8 x 5minute exposures from a Canon 5DMKII, using a Canon 70-200 f/4L at 70mm. I had it on an EQ6 German equatorial mount to track the stars for the duration.
Thanks Darren, Lester and Leon! It sure is fantastic to have such a front-row view of the Milky Way! Living in the southern hemisphere really is awesome!
Thanks heeps peeps. Greg, I framed it with scorpius running diagonally across the sensor on the night. I seem to have a slight bit of curvature in the top left corner. Not sure what's causing that, but I will experiment on another night weather permitting. This was only tracked at sidereal rate, but not guided at all. Maybe guiding will fix it?
5 minutes is quite long even for a lens without autoguiding. So yes probably the fact of not autoguided.
You can do a Photoshop correction by lassoing that area, feathering it 20 pixels, duplicate layer, set it to darken mode then filters/other/offset and play with the vertical and horizontal numbers (they may need to be - numbers ie -1) until it looks better. You may need to boost slightly with curves as sometimes it dims the stars. Fine adjustment by opacity of the slider or edit/fade.
If you're not comfortable with the above I am happy to do it for you. It'd take me 2.5 minutes (I'll time myself!).
Very well done Baz. I love the rich saturation you've presented. Can't get enough of it in fact. I'd like to see more of this field, perhaps a large mosaic. Kudos! Thanks for sharing.
5 minutes is quite long even for a lens without autoguiding. So yes probably the fact of not autoguided.
You can do a Photoshop correction by lassoing that area, feathering it 20 pixels, duplicate layer, set it to darken mode then filters/other/offset and play with the vertical and horizontal numbers (they may need to be - numbers ie -1) until it looks better. You may need to boost slightly with curves as sometimes it dims the stars. Fine adjustment by opacity of the slider or edit/fade.
If you're not comfortable with the above I am happy to do it for you. It'd take me 2.5 minutes (I'll time myself!).
Greg.
Thanks again guys!
Greg, very generous offer mate, thanks you! I will see if I have time to stuff around with images past or move on to the next one. I will certainly be practicing this out there at night to hone the focus, guiding etc. I'd rather perfect it in-camera than try to fix in post if you know what I mean.
Your methods certainly sound like a skill...(that I probably don't have)...either that or my software might not do it...PSE6...
Love the colors in those latest widefield shots you've done. Especially the blues. Terrific stuff. 
