Lake Moogerah Astrophotography Night - May16

We have been lucky with all the clear and cooler nights lately. I decided to touch base with BAS (Brisbane Astronomical Society) tonight at a location about one hour's south of the city, away from light pollution.

The location is Lake Moogerah and the views of the night sky is nothing short of amazing. As I left part of my telescope kit at home (bad error), instead I focused on my camera and shooting the night sky.

I'm pretty happy with the below shots and even though it was a 200 km round trip, the images (and experience) was well worth it.

I also met some excellent people who were more than happy to share knowledge. Enjoy the shots!

Side note: click on each image to enlarge. In the fourth shot, the bright object centre shot is Jupiter. Additionally the Milky Way is very clear in some of these images.

Backyard Astrophotography Part II - May16

Had another go tonight with my astrophotography project and experimented with three different lenses: a) my standard 24-70mm f2.8, b) a wide angled 17-40mm f4.0, and c) a prime 50mm f1.8 lens.

The prime lens did exceptionally well and brought back so much detail (refer the last two images). I think the wide aperture really helped - downside to the prime 50mm lens is it is not very wide angled, but will be good when I start getting outside the city limits and away from the light pollution.

Enjoy the shots. Note the first image you can see Mars (bright red object) and Saturn is also present, directly below (and to the right a bit), near the bottom of the image.

Once again, click on the image to view in larger format.

First Attempt at Astrophotography - May16

I've been wanting to try this out for awhile now. My camera (a Canon 5d Mkii) is a terrific piece of kit and can resolve amazing detail.

I played around tonight and took these of the night sky. The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a cable release to hit the trigger.

Most exposures were about 10-20 seconds long with a wide aperture (f2.8) to let as much light in as possible.

I then used both Photoshop and Photomatix to accentuate detail.

Thinking about buying a telescope so I can point it at the planets and constellations and mount my camera to it. So expect a few more shots like these - am intending to get an hour or two out of Brisbane so as to avoid light pollution which should resolve detail better.

Note: click on the images to view. Spot the Southern Cross (Crux constellation) and the aircraft light trail in the second image.