1st try of the night sky (hmmm, not sure about the result)

Hi Guys,

All the talk of the meteor showers inspired me to take some pics of the night sky last night.

I'm not sure If I'm expecting too much... based on some of the stunning photos that get posted on here (or I'm just impatient! )

I tried to do a photo stack (with photoshop), I'm not sure if I did it right?
I took 17 shots and stacked them in CS6 (auto aligned)...

I had a few more tries with mixed results.

Not sure if I went about it the right way?

(just to note, the light pollution is BAD were I live).

Here's my first attempt -

IMAGE LINK: http://s1012.photobuck​et.com …RGED_zpsd97e19b​1.jpg.html

Is this more of deep sky or starscape? seems like a fine start, but if you would like to do starscape, try to shoot in wider angle like somewhere around 10mm-30mmish so that you can include the landscape and stars/milky way. If you would like to do more of deep sky, tracking mount should be used with more zoomed in shot like maybe more than 150mm or even more than 200mm. taking multiple shot and stacking them is used a lot in deep sky with tracking mount.

Hi,
Was more a starscape shot I was going for.

I did have a crack with my 50mm f1.8 prime lens but I struggled with the focus... (I didn't have a lot of time to play about with it, but will give this another go).

I was looking at maybe getting a 22mm prime, would this be worth investing in to take some Starscape shots ??

well if starscape is all you want for your style of photography certainly get the wide angle lens with wide aperture like 2.8 or 1.4 lenses. If you have a crop body, it would suggest tokina 11-16mm f2.8 and if you have full frame body go for samyang/rokinon 14mm (this one is really good lens when you think of the price, even though it does not support autofocus. This wouldn't matter too much in night astrophoto since anyway you will have to manually focus the stars into a clear pinpoint image)

I am not quite sure about the 22mm prime, but i'm quite positive you will like the wider one better than the 70mm-200m telephoto lens. telephotolens could get super boring if you just shoot in random direction cuz it will only catch white dots...(if you have tracking mount, it could be a different story but that's more of deep sky...)

Hopefully it helped(even though I couldn't give you the clear answer about the 22mm lens....) it helps when you can incorporate the landscape and some constellations/milky way. constellation, milky way is very wide and thus you will find the wide angle better fits most of the times.

^ Thanks for the reply.
I'm currently shooting with my Canon 400d (Cropped) So the Tokina could be a good option.

I've found the Astrophotography on here to be really inspiring so really wanted to start out learning the basics.

Spent most of yesterday researching and seeing ideas for mounting the camera to trackers and telescopes etc... (which I'd love to try).

Have been looking for a close by 'Dark Sky' zone in my area (as where I live is pretty light-polluted), I'd love to be able to get a nice shot of the Milky way, I've seen a few shots taken from the UK with pretty good results (although they were no doubt taken by experienced photographers)

Think I have the bug

great to hear another photographer moving into astro. there are tons of different things you could try and I think you got the idea of exposure settings also (seeing from your post up there). milky way might need some higher ISO or slower shutter speed, thus wide aperture is very advantageous in this kind of photography. Tracking mount allow you to do like more than 1min exposures without star streaking on you image. you can you low iso and can get much better detail in you milky way too.

And definitley this needs some experience of failing and figuring out sometimes, and your images will get much much better each time as you practice! : )

Thanks, Really looking forward to getting out again and taking some shots (weather permitting).

Have done some searching and apparently there is an Astronomical Society just down the road from me ( http://www.swhas.org.u​k/index.html ) and they have an observatory just a few miles from where I live.

Have looked up the rough location and it's right next to a tiny village (marked as the big Red "A" on the pic)

IMAGE LINK: http://s1012.photobuck​et.com …2229_zps7ee2d57​8.png.html

Great. Good luck!