Milky Way from Australia

6x60 second exposures, Nikon D70 piggy backed on an LX90. F4.0 28mm lens.

Prepocessed the RAW files with Nikon Capture View V 4.1.2, aligned and combined in Images Plus and final touches with Nikon Capture View.

810 metres altitude, no light pollution, semi remote area, high transparency but a full moon was rising about 30 mintues later.

Astronomers' heavenly location.

Greg Bradley

Attached Image:

I notice the picture is very large when I open it. Can someone advise me how to make it smaller like other photos in this forum?

Greg.

BEAUTIFUL!

Thank you for sharing!


Ivan

Hello Greg,

nice work, but I believe you had some serious guiding problems that jeopardized an otherwise interesting picture: were you imaging with the scope in alt-az or equatorial mode? Many stars have a "ghost" (or more than one) which seems to me an image aligning problem. Some stars (top right side at approx 3/4 of the picture) have Mickey Mouse's ears which is another guiding problem (similar errors are explained on page 192-3 of Wodaski's New CCD Astronomy). If you were in alt-az mode I believe that 60 secs is probably more than your mount can take, even considering the very short focal length. However, not many mounts in my experience can take that, i.e. 60 secs unguided exposures. If you were guiding this exposure, then the problem is in the guider.

I do not mean to "spoil the party" Greg and I hope you accept and appreciate comments. It is one of the reasons why I sometime post my images here: to seek approval and advice. The little progress I can say I made I owe it largely to the people of this forum and to the above mentioned Wodaski's manual.

Ciao Greg and keep it up!

Luca