Night sky, moon pics... A question.

[gregrocco]

I'm new to DSLRs , having owned my XSi for only about 2 months. Yesterday I got my 55-250, and like a lot of people with their first zoom, I decided to take a pic of the moon. I took them without a tripod, so they came out kind of crummy, which is why I'm not posting them here, but I have a question about the results. In the pic, you can see the moon (of course, lol) but all around it, covering the entire area of the pic are tiny dots of varying color. Now, my question is, are these dots stars that my naked eye couldn't see but that the camera picked up, or are they some sort of visual noise or light pollution?

[Sorarse]

As they are various colours they sound like noise to me. One downside of long exposures of the night sky is that it causes an increase of the noise problem. Fortunately the moon is bright enough that you can still get away with short exposures.

Whilst you may not be happy with your efforts at the moment, if you posted one of your results, it would be a lot easier to be more specific with advice, especially if you post it with the EXIF data still intact.

[gjl711]

Posting an example would help but it does sound like you used too high an ISO and have picked up noise.

[gregrocco]

Assuming the sky is clear, I'll try some tonight with a tripod and maybe post some tomorrow.

[Adrena1in]

You don't want to be exposing for more than about 1/250th of a second on the moon, so I'm not sure what the dots you saw were, as I would doubt they were noise or bad pixels...might be though. As gjl said, an example would be best. Don't worry, everyone's first moon shot tends to be a little "off". You say that when you reviewed the picture there was the moon, obviously. Well in my first pictures the moon certainly wasn't obvious...it could've been a blurry light-bulb, or a headlamp of a car coming at me under water! ;)

[gregrocco]

I haven't had a chance to take any pics yet (the moon is coming out late tonight apparently), but I was playing around with the pics I took last night and have come to the conclusion that the dots are noise. The moon is only about 2/3's full, so the dark portion should be dark. If the dots were really stars, I wouldn't see any in that dark section of the moon since the moon is in front of them, but in my photos, I do.

[Naito]

try turning your iSO down to 100, 200 at most....you don't need high ISO to shoot the moon anyway.