Night Sky Images - 04/11/2021
Gear:
- Canon EOS 200D
- Tokina AT-X Pro SD 11-16mm f/2.8 (IF) DX
- Tripod
- Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount (with shutter release cable)
Weather:
- Light cloud (~10%)
Location:
- Garden
Software
- Rawtherapee - RAW file importing, optical correction & image processing
- ASTAP - Image stacking / general astrophotography toolset
- GIMP - RAW/TIF to JPEG, cropping
Images
Not a great image, looking South/West - You can just about make out Deneb (Cygnus) descending below the tree line here. Quite a noisy image - not the best, though looking very closely you can barely make out the tiny form of the Andromeda galaxy at the upper left corner.
Looking East, with Capella (Auriga constellation), Mirfak (Persus) and the Pleaides cluster visible in the centre of the image.
Conclusion
Reducing ISO to 800 and increasing exposure didn't work too well; also the sky wasn't as clear as I thought, with the main tree-line sequence particularly plagued by thin cloud. Next time I'll increase the ISO back up again and reduce the exposures back to 60-120 seconds, with more exposures if possible.
I have a possible location that I can take images from that is within 10 minutes walking distance from the houseā¦ it should be subject to less light polution - which, along with the very high angle I need to image from in the garden, is one of the biggest problems here. I'm aiming to try it out the next available (clear skies, dry ground [Ha! In Winter, in the UK?] weekend.