The Milkyway Galaxy from the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club

iceman (Mike) · #1 17-09-2009, 04:38 PM

Hi all

On Saturday night, I headed out to the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club for the first time since January, to do some social observing with friends, and some widefield photography away from home.

The image below is the outcome from the night – a widefield Milkyway image taken with my Canon 350D and 28mm f/2.8 lens, piggybacked on my ED80/EQ6.

Given it was my first image in so long, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Drift aligning went smoothly and quickly, I didn’t forget to take anything, and generally it all went as well as I could’ve hoped. I just had to remember how to process as well!

Unfortunately the 28mm lens isn't a good performer, and I didn't stop it down far enough to get rid of the large amounts of field curvature/coma in the corners (some of it is cropped out but there's still heaps).

A small 700px wide version is attached (to get it under 200kb). You can read more and view a 1200px wide less compressed version here:
The Milkyway from Mangrove Mountain Pony Club

Thanks for looking.

renormalised (Carl) · #2 17-09-2009, 05:01 PM

Nice shot, Mike...it's beauty overshadows any coma or curvature, you don't notice

DavidU (Dave) · #3 17-09-2009, 05:18 PM

Nice Mike, I like it's in ya face contrast.

TrevorW · #4 17-09-2009, 05:41 PM

Dark skies make the difference nice shot

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #5 17-09-2009, 07:08 PM

That's one big swath of sky Mike.
Lovely!

tornado33 · #6 17-09-2009, 10:07 PM

Nice shot, good processing and colour balance. My 50mm f1.8 lens also needs stopping down to get rid of coma
Scott

iceman (Mike) · #7 18-09-2009, 07:04 AM

Thanks guys, appreciate the comments.

multiweb (Marc) · #8 18-09-2009, 07:46 AM

This is very nice. Can't wait to give it a go maybe this week-end.

RB (Andrew) · #9 18-09-2009, 11:41 AM

That's turned out beautifully Mike.
The hi-res version shows up nicely and I like how you've processed it, has nice bold dynamic contrast.

Satchmo · #10 18-09-2009, 11:48 AM

I don't see any problem with the lens at F3.5 . Only the bottom left hand corner shows elongated stars for some reason.

lacad01 (Adam) · #11 18-09-2009, 12:15 PM

Mighty fine effort

Inmykombi (Geoff) · #12 18-09-2009, 06:31 PM

Top stuff Mike.

It was well worth the effort setting up on the Mountain for an image like that.

Good work again.

Hagar (Doug) · #13 18-09-2009, 08:02 PM

Come up pretty well Mike, the field curvature isn't very noticable at this size.

Octane (Humayun) · #14 08-10-2009, 11:54 PM

Mike,

Excellent widefield. Beautifully presented, too.

Regards,
Humayun

Martin Pugh · #15 09-10-2009, 11:19 AM

A fine photograph regardless Mike

cheers
Martin

gregbradley · #16 09-10-2009, 10:25 PM

That's a beauty Mike, I like it a lot.

Greg.