On Thursday night when the sky was clear, the Milky Way looked lovely setting over the mountain in the West. So on Friday night, 16th October at IISAC2009, I setup my Canon 20D and 24-105mm L lens on a tripod, and programmed it to take 30 seconds exposures on repeat.
I combined the result into a timelapse movie. There’s also a single star trails image with all of the frames combined.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had any images to post – fortunately that’s changing now.
We had some great skies up at Lostock at IISAC2009, and I was able to capture some widefield images and some experimental stuff. This image is the first I’ve had a chance to process since coming back, and it’s my first attempt at “light painting“.
It’s called “Milky Way For Sale” and was taken on Saturday night at IISAC2009. Click the image for a larger version.
Milky Way For Sale. Click image for 1200px wide version.
The Milky Way Galaxy was positioned beautifully above the mountain, and Andrew Catsaitis (RB) and I had a great idea for a novelty shot. Continue reading to find out how this shot was done.
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.
Click the image for a 1200px wide version (600kb jpeg).
The Milkyway Galaxy at the Pony Club. Click to view 1200px wide version.
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. Continue reading for more details about the capture and processing.
In the From the Vault series, I feature an older image which hasn’t been seen here before and I talk about the capture and processing and hopefully highlight why this image is special to me.
The feature image in From the Vault this week is titled Observing the Milky Way and I think it’s easy to see why. The image was taken at the South Pacific Star Party in April 2007, and shows our beautiful Milky Way Galaxy rising over the observing field at the star party.
Jupiter is the bright “star” just above the centre, and Antares is the red star at the top centre of the image.
Observing the Milky Way
It was a beautiful night at the star party though my astrophotography wasn’t going as planned. Taking this photo was a last minute decision that worked out perfectly.
Please continue reading to see how I captured and processed this image.
When you’re on a family holiday over christmas, it’s 10pm at night and the skies are clear and you feel the need to do some photography, what better option than to head into the sand dunes at Birubi Beach and take some star trail photos.
So there I was, sitting in the sand dunes while the camera clicked away with 1-minute exposures, feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere but still connected as I browsed my favourite websites on my laptop with the NextG wireless modem until my laptop battery went flat.
I was able to grab about 60 x 1-minute exposures until the camera battery went flat, and resulting star trails photo is below.
Continue reading to see a video showing the beautiful parts of our southern sky rising over the Birubi Beach Sand Dunes (as well as the cars, and the cargo ship!). You’ll also find more information including capture and processing details and why I took so long to post this image live.
This is another image taken during the Saturday night site reconnaissance for IISAC2008 on the 27th September 2008.
It’s 11 x 6 min exposures, ISO800 with the Canon 350D + Sigma 17-70mm @ 17mm. Piggybacked on the EQ6/ED80 combo, guided with a DMK21AU04. Dark subtracted, no flats.
Conditions were nice and dark with good transparency, but it was very windy with horrible seeing, causing guiding to have a few problems. Luckily with the short focal length it didn’t ruin any frames.
Unfortunately as the Milky Way set, a tree started creeping into frame on the bottom right corner, causing the very dark patch seen in the image.
This shot of Jupiter in the Milky Way was taken on the 20th September at the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club during one of our new moon meets.
I didn’t get there until 8pm and it’d been so long since I’d done any widefield photography, I didn’t capture my first real photon until 9:30pm or so. I also remembered that my serial port on my laptop is broken (stopped working at Nambucca in early July) and so I can’t control the camera (long exposures) through ImagesPlus anymore – so I had to use the timer remote for the exposure control and ImagesPlus just downloaded the images after each exposure.
Approx 12 exposures @ 5 minutes each, ISO800, using the Canon 350D + Sigma 17-70mm lens. 5 darks were used in the calibration (no flats). It was a very warm night after a very warm day.
Jupiter is the bright ’star’ at the top centre of the image.
My name is Mike Salway and I'm an amateur astronomer and photographer. I'm the co-founder of IceInSpace, and this is my personal blog site and image gallery. Read more about me.
My name is Mike Salway and I'm an amateur astronomer and photographer. I'm the co-founder of 
