Thought I'd kick this one off for this year. Simplified the name a little.
The Memsahib and I sat out last night, joining thousands across the country in Aurora Borealis watch. We were sat on a bench, on a rise, next to the 17th Tee of a local golf course we walked to. How considerate of them to place a bench there for us to use.
Sadly, no Aurora Borealis was spotted as we sat there gazing until 23:15. We got good views of Aurora Wokinghamis, though.
Bored stiff with the waiting around, I played about with my Canon R7 and Sigma 18-300mm lens, to see what it could do. Tripod mounted, naturally. Lazy as ever, I left it in Program mode, pressed shutter release and left it to get on with its own thing.
Here is its rendition of the Plough. Note the streak.
About 10 seconds later. I think the streak is a satellite. The ISS passed over earlier, bright as a candle.
Aurora Wokinghamis.
Just for a laugh, I pointed my camera at the crescent moon.
Very surprised how there was sufficient light to show the dark side (not far side, obviously) of the moon.
Much pleased with what the R7 could do with no effort on my part, I wanted to photograph Orion. It was not yet visible in the sky. One for another day.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
My old lady and I have spent many an hour looking for auroras and comet A3. We even walked to a local field, one evening, in the vain hopes of catching a last glimpse of comet A3. We were joined by another person (who studied astronomy at university) who was also hoping to get a glimpse of comet A3. Sadly, we didn't see anything.
I've now subscribed to aurora alert from Lancashire university, and look at NOAA's aurora predictor virtually every day.
As a minor consolation prize, Orion is visible in the early morning skies. I took this photo with my R7 hooked up to my medium Sigma lens. The minimum 150mm setting on my big Sigma lens just didn't seem to get Orion in total.
This photo was taken with camera handheld, elbows resting on the Memsahib's car roof, and shooting mode of Program - 'cause I'm lazy. I then post processed the image in FastStone, messing about with the Curves. I learnt this post processing trick quite recently when trying to photograph a Perseids meteor.
Certainly very good for handheld ...
I did look for the Comet a couple of times but missed it. Did have a fabulous time with the Aurora on the 10th though.
A quick timelapse of the comet.
Excellent! Well captured Ed ...
Taking advantage of actually being able to see the sky, this morning. I noticed Ursa Major right above our house; pointed my R7 with medium lens straight up, whilst leaning against our utility room door. Still a bit wobbly, but acceptable to me. I could edit out the feint double image on some of the stars, but chose not to.
Firstly, an uncropped photo - post processed in FastStone to remove noise and unwanted light scatter caused by 'aurora Bracknell/street lamps'.
Now cropped.
The orangey-yellow hue of Dubhe comes out quite well. Note, I haven't a clue what the star names are. The internet came to my rescue.
Cloud was beginning to drift in, and it was cold at 6:00am, so I only took two photos.
I'll have to break out my tripod at this rate. I can mess about with the black art of manual settings, though program mode seems to work very well for old Mr lazy here.
Nice photos Angus. I love astrophotography. A tripod is a great accessory to have for this type of photo. I am hoping to try for the Orion Nebula with my R7 and 100-500 lens. My plan is to shoot in electronic mode and stack about 20 photos together to reduce noise. With the focal length I will try and use I will probably take 3 second shots to avoid star trailing. All one great experiment. . Looking forward to seeing more photos from you.
I tried stacking photos once. Didn't quite work. However the subject I attempted to stack moved ever so slightly between frames. We're talking or or two millimetres, but sufficient to make the resulting stacked image fuzzy.
I had my cheapo, flimsy tripod at the ready this morning. Sky didn't cooperate. Cloudy.
I'll need to hook up my R7 to my laptop via a usb cable so I can remote shoot. I know this can be done wirelessly, but I'm a) old school and b) an old, hard bitten, grizzled ex-programmer who doesn't trust software - especially when it comes to security. Hence stay away from wireless as much as possible.
Hi Angus I understand your hesitation about wireless. When I use a tethered connection to the R7 it is always USB. I sometimes use a piece of software called BackyardEOS to control the camera. It can be used in both daylight and night (Red) modes. There is a cost to that unfortunately. I use AutoStakkert to stack the photos. This is a free piece of software. Has a learning curve but as an oldie I need to keep the brain going. I also use Registax, again this is a free bit of software. Good luck with image taking. Looking forward to seeing your results.
A quick tutorial on post processing of astrophotography images. I always wondered how astro-photographers got beautiful photos. Some of it is down to superb kit and knowledge. However, I found several web sites that also revealed that image post processing forms a part in getting such clear images.
One secret is to use a function called curves. I have no idea what this means or what it does precisely. I just know it's there, as a function in the freebie post processing software I use: FastStone. I think it is also in Canon's DPP4, which I rarely use as it is so unwieldy, and has memory leaks.
Uptil now, I've used a combination of setting contrast, shadows (aka brightness/darkness) and highlights to get a clear, bright image. I only tinkered with curves a month or so ago.
On with the tutorial.
This is my starting point. A very grainy, noisy photo of Ursa major, complete with the tinge of pre-sunrise light, with an added soupcon of tree branches and utility room door jamb.
I go into FastStone's curves utility. Your favourite post processing software should have something similar.
The way this works is you click on angled line. This adds an anchor to the line, which you can then move around.
The classic shape to achieve (according to the websites I read) is an 'S'. Thus, creating the first part of the 'S' by clicking somewhere on the bottom quarter of the sloped line yields this!
What a difference. All noise gone, as well as the door jamb and tree branches.
One slight snag. The stars are rather dim. OK, the trick now is to create another anchor by clicking on the top third of the sloped line, and moving it around.
Ta da! The stars get brighter, and one actually emerges.
You can add anchors to your heart's content. I've added a third anchor line here to reveal some blue stars - which may or may not be blue.
You can mess about to your heart's content with this utility, and other utilities in the processing suite to get whatever effects you want.
It doesn't just work on stars.
Great Spotted Woodpecker before.
And after messing with curves.