Trying to shoot the Milky Way...

[playback]

Hey all,

I am at Yosemite National Park this week and I wanted to see if I could get the milky way in some sky shots.

I have a XTi unmodded, sigma 10-20 and a regular tripod ( non-tracking )

I "should" be able to capture at least something of the milky way with a 30-45 second exposure correct? I've seen some pics posted with a very similar setup before.

One of my problems ( if I can in fact capture a variation of the milky way with my setup ) is locating where it is in the sky. Maybe somone could fill me in in relation to Polaris?

I haven't been able to find Saggitaris yet, but I know Ursa Major is pretty high in the sky when I have a chance to shoot.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[troypiggo]

With that lens being so wide, you should be able to just point the camera anywhere in the general direction of the sky and get some part of the Milky Way :)

Seriously. I'd try a 30s exposure, play it back to see and check composition, maybe zoom in to check the stars aren't trailing (if so, shorten the exposure a little).

Not sure of what light pollution is like over there. Might want to have ISO set pretty high - like 800 or so. And don't stop the aperture down too much. Keep it f/4-f/5.6.

PS - this is the "photo sharing" section. You might want to post questions in the "discussion" section in future.

[ebann]

Read this to see what you can do... it's based on a 50mm f/1.8 lens but yours being wider you can get longer exposures without problems!

http://www.pbase.com/samirkharusi/beginners

[cruiser]

Have you tried Stellarium software. You can get it free here:
http://www.stellarium.org/
Configure it for your location and you can easily see where things are in the sky.
If you can take a laptop with you on the trip it would really help you learn your way around the sky. As long as you know your north from south ;)

Brett

[HaroldC3]

I use skymaps to find objects in the sky.

http://skymaps.com/

[playback]

thanks for the help guys, I will see what I can find.

I did take some shots a few nights ago and nothing was showing up. I can get a relatively clear image at 35 sec, but no milky way.

I'm shooting at F4, ISO 1600 at anywhere between 35 seconds (not too much noticeable blur) to over a minute, but no milky way. I thought that maybe it just hadn't risen yet in the horizon. I'll try again!

edit: Mods can move this to discussion if they want, sorry for the mis-post.

[ebann]

Do you have any faster lens? f/4 and f/1.8 are worlds apart in light gathering ability! No nifty fifty in your bag?

[Adrena1in]

From my own experience, the best part of the Milky Way for the Northern Hemisphere is around the constellation Cygnus. That's only just rising in the middle of the night at the moment. From a dark site you should be able to see the Milky Way with the naked eye though.

Hang on, just found this which might be useful. It shows the constellations the Milky Way is most prominent in.

http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/

[Chopper Al]

Stellarium is a great program. I downloaded it not too long ago, and have used it quite a bit since then, just to see what is out there! Very easy to use as well.

Al

[bjordan]

From my own experience, the best part of the Milky Way for the Northern Hemisphere is around the constellation Cygnus. That's only just rising in the middle of the night at the moment. From a dark site you should be able to see the Milky Way with the naked eye though.


I agree Cygnus is beautiful. Sagittarius is awesome too, but in a very different way.

Unfortunately for the Yosemite trip, we're in evening galaxy season. When Ursa Major is up, they're dripping out of the Dipper all over the place. For the Milky Way, one end is down and the other is barely coming up. So, the options are 1. Stay up late. 2. Wait a couple of months.

[bbulldog]

From my own experience, the best part of the Milky Way for the Northern Hemisphere is around the constellation Cygnus. That's only just rising in the middle of the night at the moment. From a dark site you should be able to see the Milky Way with the naked eye though.

Hang on, just found this which might be useful. It shows the constellations the Milky Way is most prominent in.

http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/
try this link http://canopus.physik.uni-potsdam.de/~axm/astrophot.html

[renderwerks]

I just recently did this in SoCal. About 3 weeks ago. I have a thread; the exposures were 4 minutes in length and tracked.

The band runs from aproximately due South, and meets the horizon again just slightly East of due North.

It was visible just above the Eastern horizon at about 10:00pm, and reached it's highest point in the night sky at about 4:30am just before it began to get light. The highest point of the band looked to be about 55-60 degrees up from the Eastern horizon.

Hope this helps.

[MakeMeShutter]

I just finished downloading and running the Stellarium program, and all I can say is WOW !!!

I don't shoot astro, but this program may inspire me to start.

So glad I follow this thread and good luck with the Milky Way !!!!

--Shawn :)

[playback]

thanks for your help guys.

Unfortunately, I can't get out there any later than 10-11pm :(

I guess I will have to pass back through here in the winter ;)

I'll do my research for next time!

[bjordan]

thanks for your help guys.

Unfortunately, I can't get out there any later than 10-11pm :(

I guess I will have to pass back through here in the winter ;)

I'll do my research for next time!

For an evening Milky Way... pretty much any time except now is good :-S.

I'm not an astrophotographer, but I've been an avid stargazer for years. All my friends are amazed at all the stuff I know about the stars and planets. (LOL okay, they think I'm a nerd but I can interest them sometimes). Anyway, if you're really interested in learning, here's my advice.

To get a great working knowledge of the sky, just go out to a dark place for couple hours or so around each new moon for a year with a pair of binoculars. It really isn't much time to invest, and you will enjoy the things you learn for the rest of your life. Regular 10x50s are great for finding major deep sky objects and just enjoying the galaxy. You can even see Jupiter's moons. I wouldn't go over 12x though - it gets too shaky to see anything handheld.

Bino's are great because they're inexpensive, highly portable, and they force you to really learn the sky. Go-to scopes are great, but it's sad when I see someone with an expensive scope who obviously can't find anything on their own.

Now is the perfect time to start, because next Spring you can do a Messier Marathon from a very dark location to cap off your knowledge of the major DSOs. It's fun. Two years ago, I found over 90 with my 12x60s! (Dark location). I already was familiar with the majority of them, and could read the charts well enough to find the rest without too much trouble.

Anyway, here's what I use:

- Binos
- Reclining beach chair
- Really warm clothes (don't underestimate this - you won't be moving around a lot. Carry gloves, cap, scarf, wool socks, layers).
- Planisphere - I use Orion's "Star Target," but less now than I did at first. Now I usually have out:
- Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas by Sinnott. It's a great, inexpensive atlas with just the right detail for binos.
- Very dim red flashlight - I use Orion's "RedBeam II" turned all the way down. You don't need much light to read charts after your eyes have adapted for 15 minutes or so.
- Stellarium on occasion to keep me up-to-date on planets, and heavens-above.com to clue me in on worthy satellites to watch for. I get an annual skywatching magazine each year too, to point out interesting things.
- A Messier Marathon list is a good "target" list once you know some constellations. Dim galaxies and many globulars can be difficult to discern though. Astroleague.org has tons of info including great bino object lists in their "observing clubs" section.

P.S. - Dew can be a big problem with binos. I made some dew shields out of pringles cans painted black that help a lot.

[bbulldog]

Something else interesting then is this

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/interactive/fov/fov.asp