Planning a Shoot: Two questions

Hey guys,


my buddy and I are planning a shoot around the new moon to go up to Prescott (high desert and dark skies) for an astro shoot.

My two questions are this:
- what can we shoot (at this time of year)?
- What can we do with a max of 400mm untracked?

Our available lenses include up to a 400mm L, and as wide as 16mm at f/2.8.

I've done most of my star gazing in the winter when Orion is nice and handy, but it's summer here. :P

Andromeda/M31 starts to rise to a decent height about 2:30ish AZ time I think.
What else is there to shoot at 400mm or less in the summer without a tracking mount?

Of course we'll try a few wide angle Milky Way shots but we're wondering what we can
do with a coupla decent fast telephotos.

My star app tells me where everything is, but not what kind of focal length I'd need to see it or shoot it.

Any suggestions?

rogue.guineapig wrote in post #16965783
Hey guys,

my buddy and I are planning a shoot around the new moon to go up to Prescott (high desert and dark skies) for an astro shoot.

My two questions are this:
- what can we shoot (at this time of year)?
- What can we do with a max of 400mm untracked?

Our available lenses include up to a 400mm L, and as wide as 16mm at f/2.8.

I've done most of my star gazing in the winter when Orion is nice and handy, but it's summer here. :P

Andromeda/M31 starts to rise to a decent height about 2:30ish AZ time I think.
What else is there to shoot at 400mm or less in the summer without a tracking mount?

Of course we'll try a few wide angle Milky Way shots but we're wondering what we can
do with a coupla decent fast telephotos.

My star app tells me where everything is, but not what kind of focal length I'd need to see it or shoot it.

Any suggestions?

To figure how long you can shoot with a given focal length, here is a formula to get started with, some use a slightly different rule, however this is very close.

There is a way to find out how long you can expose with a given focal length before you'll see star trails form, this formula will cover full frame and 1.6 crop bodies.
divide 600 by the focal length of the lens = maximum number of seconds before star trails form, for a full frame camera body.
For a crop body first convert the lens to the full frame equivalent; ex. 14mm lens x 1.6 = 22.4mm
600 / 22.4 = 26 seconds


On you PC you can use Stellarium to find out what will be visible from your location and time.

thanks for the tip on the app...I've been looking at it a bit. Hopefully we find some worth while targets!