Beneath our radiant Southern Cross...

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

First ever attempt at a stacked wide field astrophoto, taken early this morning from the backyard, in Griffith (Country NSW)

the tech details:
Canon 400D unmodified
Nikon 50mm 1.8 prime @ f2, ISO800, with F mount / EOS adapter
Fixed tripod
37 x 8 secs sub-exposures
43 x 8 sec dark frames
40 flat frames (zenith at dawn)
43 bias frames (1/4000s)
Pre-processing in DeepSkyStacker
Subtle curve tweeking in Darktable (a linux version of Adobe Lightroom)

DeepSkyStacker - basically went with all the suggested software settings:
RGB Channels Background Calibration
Kappa-Sigma (K=2.00, iterations =5)
Bias: median
Dark: median Kappa-Sigma, Dark Optimisation, Hot Pixel removal
Flat: median
Detect and clean remaining hot pixels

Any tips/advice appreciated

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Richard. I like it. A mass of stars well captured and nice dust lanes. "From Cross to Carina" it might be titled.

Perhaps a little saturation to bring out the star colours more. You worked very hard on that one.

Another Linux user. I must try Darkroom.

[eamsie (Jessie Eames)]

Wow, for a first attempt this is REALLY GOOD! Keep up the good work

[skysurfer]

Looks really good ! You did not track ?

But you can easily use ISO1600 !

I got this pic of the same area (but a little bit smaller FOV)
http://sky.velp.info/skypics3/large/...20-stacked.jpg
by stacking 7 frames of each 30 seconds (tracked), no flat, 2 darks with DSS with the 40d + 1.8/85 @ ISO1600. Stars till +12.5 !

You can do the same with your gear even @ 8 seconds (then no tracking required), it's easy !