Scorpius and the Milky Way Widefield

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

On new moon weekend in April, I was invited out to the Mudgee Star Party at the Mudgee Observatory, held by the Southerland Astronomical Society Inc (SASI), to give a talk on my astrophotography.

I took Jacob with me, and we had a fantastic weekend. Beautiful clear skies at night, warm sunny days, and a great friendly bunch of people at a great location.

On the first night I did some widefield astrophotography, with my modded Canon 40D with 24-105mm L lens sitting piggyback on top of my ED80.

Below is the image of the Scorpius constellation in the Milky Way. 1200px 900kb.

Scorpius and the Milky Way Widefield.

The image consists of 7x 10 min exposures (70min total) @ ISO1600, with the 24-105mm L lens @ 24mm f/5.0. Darks were taken using In Camera Noise Reduction (ICNR) and flats were taken with the light box at the end of the session and calibrated using Deep Sky Stacker. The image was guided by the 400mm refractor and DMK21AU04 on the EQ6.

Processing was done using Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop CS4.

I'm quite happy with how the image turned out, with the exception of the bottom left corner which has some weird horizontal banding again (different than the horizontal banding in my Orion Nebula image). I can't see it in the raw light frames, so I can't help but think it was a result of the calibration or stacking process in Images Plus. I'll need to re-process without calibration and with a different tool to find out for sure.

Here's a version of the image with the constellation lines and a few other objects noted.

The Scorpius Constellation.

Attached are low-res (700px wide) jpegs.

Thanks for looking. Comments more than welcome.

[duncan]

Great image Mike. Really shows off the Dust lane. So much to look at, need to blow it right up to take it all in.
Cheers,
Duncan

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

That's a wonderful image Mike, thanks for sharing. One of my favourite parts of the sky. Top shot and you've captured the colours nicely

[Jeffkop (Jeff)]

Amazing to realise that when we look up at night we only really see a fraction of whats really there. Enjoyed the viewing Mike.

[gregbradley]

Great shot Mike. I love these widefield lens shots of the Milky Way. We are so well positioned to take these.

A DSLR mosaic of the Milky Way is definitely a project of mine this year.

Greg.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice job Mike

You've done a few shots of this area now, it's very photogenic.

I can't really notice the banding on my screen here at work..?

Mike

[alexch (Alex)]

Superb image, Mike! It inspires me to put my DSLR on EQ mount and try longer lenses.

I can't see any banding on my calibrated LCD screen, but it probably shows up in larger size.

Alex

[Tom Davis (Tom)]

I love shots like this, and this one is no exception! Great image, Mike!

Tom

[richardo (Rich)]

Hi ya Mike,
yes I too love very wide fields of our very own galaxy core.
This is a beauty as it's not over saturated, probably could use a wee bit more though, but really, it looks very natural to me and well balanced.
The dark lanes stand out very well indeed!

If your going to do a repro, I'd love for you to include a higher res version of it to your site and let us scroll around some.... I'm sure it could handle it no worries, don't worry too much about those artifacts you mentioned.

Keep up the good work.

All the best
Rich

[rogerg (Roger)]

Nice image Mike, nice contrast

Good to see you getting some time & enthusiasm for astrophotgraphy again.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Great shots Mike, I hope I can acheive that level of AP.

[kustard (Simon)]

Great shot Mike

Glad the skies where good for you.

[Doomsayer]

Nice shot under great skies.

I hope you invited the Sutherland lot to IISAC.
They are a good bunch. I got the astro bug at their observatory in the late 1970's.

cheers
guy

[multiweb (Marc)]

Cool shot Mike. Great colors. You can even make up Rho Oph. Nice.

[h0ughy (David)]

nice work Mike

[PeterM]

Wow!

It's cloudy and i've had a few ports so I reckon tomorrow it will be double wow.

PeterM.

[danielsun]

Very nice Mike. Love widefields.

Cheers Daniel.

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your comments.

The banding was more visible on the full resolution - I'll see if I can do a 100% crop and show it. Interestingly, it looked like it had a *pattern* when viewed at 67% in Photoshop, but that could just be the resolution and the scaling in Photoshop.

I do love capturing these areas of the milky way. One day I'd love to do a mosaic at a slightly higher res, or even just the same with a much faster lens and more exposure.

I had another 15 minutes worth of data but the 10 min one didn't stack well and the 5 minute one I forgot to put ICNR on.

Thanks again, it's so nice to be taking and processing astrophotos again. I'm quite sure I won't be back into it full time just yet (very busy couple of months coming up) but i'll certainly be trying to get to regular new moon meets.

[Paul Haese]

Looks good. Nice colours but more saturation would make the nebs stand out.

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Excellent stuff Mike