Astronomy, Photography and Weather

I've been experimenting with stitching together images in hopes of shooting the Milky Way region this summer with my nifty fifty. I have a lot to learn about overlapping and all the other particulars that go along with panos, especially doing it in the dark.  This is a little hard to see being a single row of 5 images but it turned out reasonably well. When I get the hang of things I'll stack them 2 or 3 high. This is the Cygnus Region lying horizontal just above the tree tops at my place. Skies were reasonably dark around midnight last night. These were 10 second exposures, f/2.2 at 1600 ISO.  I'll probably try 800 ISO also, but because the skies are so dark, I might get away with 1600. The view is approximately 60 degrees wide. The location I'm going to later on is at about 3,500' with crystal clear, very dark skies and I'll shoot the Milky Way overhead.  Any comments and critiques very welcome.



(http://i41.tinypic.com/11l5uhj.jpg)

The only critique that I can think of it Richard is that I wish I could see it at a bigger size, other than that I think it's brilliant. Great MW detail and I like Sagitta above the trees with the Coat Hanger jumping out from the image, not to mention the fabulous nebulosity in central Cygnus. Great stuff!. I very much look forward to seeing more of those  :)

Richard, I'm with Martin, oh to see that larger... Looks absolutely cracking though. I can't find the coat hanger... but that's just me  ;D I might have to give one of these a try later in the year.

I'm with the guy's on that one, would like to see a bigger shot. John, the Coathanger is dead center half way across.

That's superb Richard, and I'm with the crowd in wanting to see it bigger! What method are you using for stitching!

Incidentally John (gs) the Coathanger is indeed dead centre, but to me it always looks more like a light aircraft in that orientation!

Totally Super Richard!!!   The tree line adds depth to the shot and what a dark sky!!  :D

Thanks Paul and John... I'd been studying it for ages to find it, then suddenly pop....

Thanks for the comments gentlemen. I wish I did know how to get a larger image, but so far this is about all I can do. Right now I'm using Photomerge in Photoshop Elements 4 for my stitching. Seems to do a decent job, but I know with Pauls panos you can click to enlarge and then scroll to view. That's beyond what I know at this time. I went up to the mountains last night and did some more shots for panos and am working on them now. Any help on enlarging them would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm reposting this image in a little larger size. After just saying I couldn't get it any larger, I went back into TinyPics and tried again and today it let me do what I tried yesterday, go figure. Anyway, there's a little more detail visible. The ones I'm working on now will hopefully turn out a little better. Thanks.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2egcpwi.jpg)

Congrats Richard on an excellent stitch job - something I've never attempted, so alas I can't offer any advice.  :(

Yes the larger size is certainly better, however I can see that the jpg looks over-compressed (if that's the right term) on the bigger version - at least on my monitor.

Hi Andy, yes I'm still learning all this too. It's definitly much easier posting a single frame on the site, but when stitching multiple images of stars, especially at 1600 ISO, there seems to be all sorts of issues that arise when trying to find a good fit and compressing the final image for the forum screen.  Anyway, hopefully I'll learn a little more as I go along. Thanks to all for the comments.

Excellent Richard!!, plenty of MW and stars in there to keep anyone busy for a long time.

You could upload a much larger image to tinypic and just post the URL here, that way we could see a much bigger image. Just a suggestion.

Keep them coming  :)

yes, I can see it too.

But the image is great! Richard you may post a link to uncompressed image (even if it is a few Mb in size) - it's always worth to see it.
...and... nice skies there!  ;)