Recent Summer shots

Hi all, I finally got to do some shots three weeks ago during a fine weather spell of both the giant star Antares region in Scorpius and the large Sagittarius starcloud low down in the south at the start of June. I was really pressed to get some decent exposure as the twighlight hours of early june were quite bright, but the backdrop of these two regions against the twighlight sky was stunning, especially viewed with binoculars.

The Antares region is a stack of some 40 minutes total, I found that the dust lanes of the rho ophiuchi star froming region were hard to show, but the globular clusters M4 and M80 show up nicely.

www.flickr.com/photos/79652716@N00/58734...es/l/in/photostream/

I also got a short glimpse of the elusive galactic centre, which was very low down in the south. This is a shot of only 7.5 minutes, as the dawn was fast approching. It nicely shows the lagoon nebula M8, and both M20 & M21. It also shows the star cluster M6 at bottom right and the globular cluster M22 at upper left. Galactic dust lanes are clearly visible, silhoutted against the backdrop ofcountless stars.

I spent a lovely night with out the binoculars, well worth the effort!

www.flickr.com/photos/79652716@N00/58729...es/l/in/photostream/

Keith.

nice one Keith,
Did you add the star spikes or are they from the camera lens ?

Fair play Keith. Tough to get anything done these nights.
They look great.

Great shots Keith. I tired Antares last year but i didn't bother processing the images because i thought there wasn't enough contrast with the twilight. I was gonna retry it this year as i modded my camera and bought a light pollution filter and i was hoping it would make a difference but i never got the weather. Your images have given me heart. They really are great images especially to be taken from so far north. What equipment did you use? Was it a modded camera? Did you use a light pollution filter?would one even work? Anyway once again Keith, fantastic images. Well done.

Brendan
www.Donegalskies.com

Hi lads thanks, they were tough to get. Dave, no star spikes added, they are the effect of stopping down the lens a bit

Brendan, my camera is not modified so you may be able to capture more detail, I exposed each shot for a maximum of two mintes as the twilight is just too strong. I used my canon 40d on the astrotrac witha 70-200mm L lens. I did'nt use the light pollution filter as my site is very dark though if you use your be aware that you probably will need about double this exposure time to get a decent image brightness, maybe I'm wrong throwing in the factor of the modded camera???

Also the light pollution filter I have found will give a very blue hue to your image and can be hard to process out...het give it a try, I'd love to see your results!!

Keith..

Great stuff there Keith. Must have been very very difficult to process. Tried some shots around Cygnus a month or so ago on one of the rare clear nights but didn't have a huge amount of success - going to try again soon weather permitting.
Almost the same setup here, Astrotrac + 70-200L + 30D : cheer: