Rho Oph "tyre tracks" running into the Milky Way

[apaulo (Paul)]

Well done Alex

I must pick your brains at the next members nite. I might even have to get some Russian beer to extract the last bit of info

Best Regards Paul.

[leon]

I might be a bit late here but that is a beauty, suitable for any postcard, well done indeed.

Leon

[starfinder (Russ)]

Beeeeeautiful shot Alex. Great planning, well executed and highly deserving of Image of the Week. Congratulations. Russ

[Terry B]

A great photo. Well done.

[bloodhound31]

Alex, I'd like to shake your hand mate. This photograph shows your skill and eye in so many area's. Composition is exquisite, exposure is just right, colours are magnificent and processing is spot on. If I could ever turn out an image as good as this I would really feel like I had achieved something.

Is your camera a full-frame sensor or cropped frame? that 14mm F2.8 looks like it has done a spectacular job of capturing a great deal of the MW in a single frame.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of art and skill mate.

Baz.

[venus (Lydia)]

Truly awesome. Reminds me of a scene in the movie "Contact"

[acropolite (Phil)]

Superb shot Alex, I'm curious about the stacked sky images, you mentioned software derotation , what software did you use, or did you end up keeping the exposure times down and not using derotation, also I'm curious as to the ISO used?

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by bloodhound31

Alex, I'd like to shake your hand mate. This photograph shows your skill and eye in so many area's. Composition is exquisite, exposure is just right, colours are magnificent and processing is spot on. If I could ever turn out an image as good as this I would really feel like I had achieved something.

Is your camera a full-frame sensor or cropped frame? that 14mm F2.8 looks like it has done a spectacular job of capturing a great deal of the MW in a single frame.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of art and skill mate.

Baz.

Thanks, Barry!

D700 is a full-frame camera and 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom covers about 120 degrees diagonally at 14mm. I must add the lens is amazing, very low distortion and sharp across the frame with minimal coma even wide open.

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by acropolite

Superb shot Alex, I'm curious about the stacked sky images, you mentioned software derotation , what software did you use, or did you end up keeping the exposure times down and not using derotation, also I'm curious as to the ISO used?

Thanks, Phil.

I used Austostar Envisage (free software from Meade) to stack this, but since then I found out that Deep Sky Stacker does a better job of de-rotating and averaging the exposures. I found that 15 second exposures at 14mm focal length work best with Deep Sky Stacker and it can successfully align 7-9 images, which is enough.

Strictly speaking Nikon D700 does not need much improvement on a 30-second exposure at f/2.8 and ISO 3200. It would be hard to tell the difference in a print unless it is very large. In all of my other photos at http://www.terrastro.com the sky is not stacked.

Cheers,
Alex

[gary]

Superb!

Best Regards

Gary

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Thought I had already commented on this..? I must be dreaming

Great shot Alex, well composed and shot, very inspiring

Mike

[Neil]

Alex ,thats a great image !,I feel like I,m there,... ready to leap in. inspirational mate.

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Thought I had already commented on this..? I must be dreaming

Great shot Alex, well composed and shot, very inspiring

Mike

You certainly did Mike! And even made it IOTW (thanks)

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by alexch

You certainly did Mike! And even made it IOTW (thanks)

Errr...wrong Mike ...I don't think Mike Salway speeks to me anymore

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Errr...wrong Mike ...I don't think Mike Salway speeks to me anymore

Indeed - my apologies to both Mikes
(I should not be doing 10 things at one time...)

[rogerg (Roger)]

I'm really quite surprised what detail you have in the sky for such short exposures. It does show the type of colour balance I'd expect for a DSLR, but still I'm surprised at the detail. I've just enjoyed looking over your website and you've got several nice shots there.

In some ways I'm wondering what I do wrong to not get such sensitivity on my 7D! Probably the biggest difference is in noise, I presume your camera would have less noise.

Full frame wide field is nice. Something I miss with my current camera.

Do you shoot wide open at f/2.8?

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by rogerg

I'm really quite surprised what detail you have in the sky for such short exposures. It does show the type of colour balance I'd expect for a DSLR, but still I'm surprised at the detail. I've just enjoyed looking over your website and you've got several nice shots there.

In some ways I'm wondering what I do wrong to not get such sensitivity on my 7D! Probably the biggest difference is in noise, I presume your camera would have less noise.

Full frame wide field is nice. Something I miss with my current camera.

Do you shoot wide open at f/2.8?

Thanks, Roger.

At night I always use the 14-24mm lens wide open - it is so good there is no real reason to stop it down.

I guess the main difference is about 1-stop sensitivity advantage due to the sensor size. I also think Nikkor 14-24 has some magic elements in it, and maybe a large 100mm front element helps with point light sources.

Cheers,
Alex

[rogerg (Roger)]

Originally Posted by alexch

Thanks, Roger.

At night I always use the 14-24mm lens wide open - it is so good there is no real reason to stop it down.

I guess the main difference is about 1-stop sensitivity advantage due to the sensor size. I also think Nikkor 14-24 has some magic elements in it, and maybe a large 100mm front element helps with point light sources.

Cheers,
Alex

I just googled the lens. Wow, that's some glass. Wow.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Roger,

The Nikkor 14-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm make up the f/2.8 "holy trinity" of Nikon glass.

A mate of mine has the 24-70mm with the new fangled nano coating and it is an incredible lens; it resolves an enormous amount of detail.

I've found in my web trawling, that a lot of Canon owners have purchased the 14-24mm and Nikon-EF adapter for landscapes as it's just so good.

We're waiting for Canon to provide us something (the 14mm f/2.8L II doesn't count as it's a prime) of a similar standing in a wide-angled zoom.

H

[luigi]

Totally fantastic, the glow is amazing!!