Summer Milkyway from Portugal

Hi all, I'm just back from a great holiday in portugal, I thought i'd have a go at shooting the Summer Milkyway from there, and take a look at parts of the sky what we don't get to see from here 'up north' . This is a rough shot I took with an 18mm lens attached to the 300D, piggybacked on a manually guided ETX 70 (first time!) - please forgive me on the slight tracking errors, it was'nt easy But it's sooooo hot here, temperature was about 23C at night, humidity was high, and seeing, well - was crap Nevertheless....

You can see the tail of Scorpius - lovely in binoculars, we're really missing out there Sagittarius was lovely also, and looking at Starclusters M6 & M7 was great.

I shot from the local beach where they had floodlights that would put any football stadium to shame, you can see the sea lit up, with some ships on the horizon.

Details: Canon 300D 18mm Lens at f4.5
Date & Location: 9th June 2005, Albufeira, Algarve, Portugal
Exposure: 2 minutes
Guiding: Meade ETX70-AT Piggyback with autostar hand controller
ISO: 400
Conditions: Very Poor Seeing and Transparency, High temp & humidity
Best I could do.......

Keith...

Welcome back Keith - hope you actually did some holiday stuff too!

That's not a bad image considering seeing and guiding. Any idea what that dark thick line is east to west about 1/3 from the bottom? And do you know the town/city you can see on the horizon? Or is that a really BIG ship!

Any problems with customs/security by the way?

Cheers

Dave McD

The last time I saw Scorpius like that is when I was in the Canaries back in the ninetees, ahhh to be there again. not this year unfortunately.
Keith, was the naked eye light pollution as bad as the pic indicates or was the sky darker?

I await the day when I can have both time AND money to get down to those lattudes with a telescope! Still, with Anthony's offer for a short stay in Greece, who knows!



Great picture Keith, you're turning out some great pictures lately!

The dark thick line east to west is actually an airplane trail I did'nt even see this the transparency was so bad, but the sky was actually darker than the shot shows. And thats a big ship out on the horizon, it was really bright.

Customs only stopped momentarily to check the x-ray scan of my etx in the hand luggage, no problems at all, I did'nt even have to open it up Still, I had the manual with me just in case

Keith..