View from my backyard

[RoadKingLarry]

Took a couple pics of the Milky Way as seen from my back yard last night.
Not too bad for a first attempt considering I don't know what I'm doing and my lens isn't the best for this type of photography.



 



And for those of you city dwellers that never get to see this many stars at night....

[Viking]

Not bad. Are you far enough from the nearest city to make light from it a non-issue*, or does the camera capture more stars than what is visible with the naked eye?

*I refuse to use the term "light pollution". I like civilization.

[RoadKingLarry]

I have some pretty obnoxious light pollution which can be seen in the lower edges of the pics but I'm still able to see and capture what you see though the camera does catch stars that aren't detectable to the naked eye.
I'd like to get a faster wide angle lens so that I can make the same exposure in less time. I'm starting to get trailing on the stars with what I was doing last night.

[230RN]

Angles (azimuth and elevation), time, date? (Approximate will do.)

Just want to see if I can ID anything from my ancient Xastro program.

[RoadKingLarry]

Angles (azimuth and elevation), time, date? (Approximate will do.)

Just want to see if I can ID anything from my ancient Xastro program.

Last night about 2200 local time (CDT) first pic was west by southwest second pic was Northeast-ish both pretty much pointed "up"
I think I'm pointing to far above the horizon to make out Scorpio but Sagitarius should be visible near the bottom of the first pic.

The 2nd pic I can just pick Cygnus out of the noise, more or less middle of the pic

[MechAg94]

Who did the sky writing?  I didn't know that stuff could be seen at night.   



Cool.  You know you have a clear sky when you can see the occasional satellite. 

[230RN]

OK, I only tried the first pic:
Observer at Tulsa OK, 2200 hrs CDT, 07 Sep 2015, field of view 180°, elevation 45°, azimuth 252°, epoch of date.

First attachment shows the constellations, second one just the plain old stars.

I believe you were pointing a little more south of W by SW.

I couldn't screen capture the images, I had to use a separate handheld camera since the print driver on that ooooolde software won't match up with the ports on that computer (Dell Vostro, XP) and "Print Screen" doesn't work with XASTRO on that machine, either.

Thanks for the data (and images); I just wanted to play around with it.  In reducing the pix, a lot of resolution got lost, but... here they are.

Muchos Danke,
Terry

NOTE:  Sorry, attachments would not work. :(

[Devonai]

Nice! There's nothing like staring into the ecliptic plane of the galaxy to make you feel small.

Fun fact: "galaxy" means milky way so "Milky Way galaxy" is redundant. This fun fact brought to you by the Pedant International Social Service.

[RoadKingLarry]

I believe you were pointing a little more south of W by SW.

It was dark. I just looked up saw what I wanted to capture and set up the camera.

Next time I try that I may see if I can get some overwatch. The coyotes were probably inside 100 yds a good part of the time I was shooting.

[RoadKingLarry]

Here's a couple more, slightly different exposure and post process





230RN, if you want I can see if I can get you a couple of the full size jpg files to play with, they run about 17 MB for size.

[wmenorr67]

It was dark. I just looked up saw what I wanted to capture and set up the camera.

Next time I try that I may see if I can get some overwatch. The coyotes were probably inside 100 yds a good part of the time I was shooting.

I would come up and shoot them bastards for you.

[230RN]

RKL offered,

230RN, if you want I can see if I can get you a couple of the full size jpg files to play with, they run about 17 MB for size.

Nah. I just wondered if I could pick out individual features by referencing XASTRO, my ancient DOS-based astronomy program.  Pure personal curiosity and play-time.  The answer is yes, at least off the monitor screen.

I got all po'ed and frustrated because I don't use an image-hosting site so have to use attachments.  Ran into difficulty posting the photo images of my screen because although I reduced them,  I could not post both of them.  There's a TOTAL limit of 2 (which is OK) and something like a 190 KB TOTAL limit for two attachments, which is too restrictive. So I let my post above stand without attachments.

By the time I would reduce them to fit that TOTAL limit, they'd have been unreadable anyhow.  Here's one showing the constellations.  There's another one just showing the star field, but the heck with it anyhow.

You'll notice Scorpio and the aggregation of stars of the milky way are at the lower left, which means, from your description of "W-SW", my azimuth of 252° was too far north, and my elevation of 45° was too high.

Terry

[KD5NRH]

Can't find it now, but there used to be a plan online using a $10 24 hour mechanical timer and a dollar store mini tripod head to make a clock drive for long exposure astrophotos with lightweight cameras.  (Pretty simple; figure a way to point the axis of the timer's dial at Polaris and then epoxy the tripod head to it. I think he used a 1/4-20 nut epoxied to the back of the timer, and a piece of tubing glued to the side parallel to the axis for sighting and mounted it on his good tripod.)  Some pretty impressive results from a Canon Powershot and CHDK to allow for the exposure times.

[230RN]

It's amazing what that old 16-bit program, which TOTALs only about  800 KB (I got it off a 5-1/4" floppy, originally, and the Kilobytes is correct) can do.

What's "CHDK?"  It's one of my stupid days.

KD5NRH, I'm sure there are simple ways to do it, but I'm reminded of a buddy of mine who got a super duper pro telescope outfit with built-in tracking which only worked inside his house.  When he brought it out into the yard, it would go all wonky.  Don't know what the cause was, I suggested maybe the power lines overhead were affecting it, but I don't know what the final upshot of it all was.  Maybe I'll give him a call and find out.

[never_retreat]

Its a little to bright here to do that.
I think we might be going out to the wifes aunts house for Thanksgiving this year. I defiantly want to give this a try.
Shes out in potter county pa at 2500'. Next town over is supposed the be the darkest spot this side of the Mississippi.
What setting did you use? I have an older d80 with a 18-135 lens or I have a fixed 50 2.8f I think.