First attempt at photographing stars

Evening folks,

I just purchased a used Canon S3 IS camera earlier this week, and thought I would have a go at seeing what it could do with some night shooting. I set up my camera on a tripod in our backyard. We live in a fair sized city and the sky was far from black.

The first shot is of the one of the dippers (big I think). It's been a while since I tried picking out any of the star patterns. Anyway, it is a single shot with a 15 second exposure, F4 and ISO 400. The image is fairly noisy and was played around with a bit in Photoshop. I was totally blown away by the color of the tree and how bright it turned out to be.

Great start. That'll give you an idea of what you can capture with your setup. This caught my eye as photos I take are very much the same. The trees do jump out which turns into a creative opportunity to try to find other things to frame with star shots.

Tip: get away from the city and away from the lights. This way you'll be able to see/capture more stars.

The aim of stacking a lot of images together is to improve the signal to noise ratio. If you atack 4 15 second frames it is close to the equivalent of a 1 minute frame. The output from DSS WILL be dark but SHOULD allow you to stretch the histogram a lot further than you could with a single frame. DONT clip the highlights or the black point. Aim for a sky that is very dark grey and not black. Photoshop tools are a bit of a blunt instrument when it comes to playing with the histogram of Astro images.

Bit surprised at how much trailing you got in the first shot for a 15second exposure at that wide an angle. Is your tripod fairly solid and was it at all windy. If possible turn IS OFF as the IS motors will induce some unwanted vibration.

Thanks everyone for your tips and suggestions.

chris.bailey wrote in post #7726611
Bit surprised at how much trailing you got in the first shot for a 15second exposure at that wide an angle. Is your tripod fairly solid and was it at all windy. If possible turn IS OFF as the IS motors will induce some unwanted vibration.

I was using just a regular camera tripod, not flimsy, but not telescope quality either. I did have IS turned on, and will turn it off the next time I go out. Wasn't really windy, but it was cold.

Al

Nice start, sky looks pretty dark to me. That's the Big Dipper in the first image, yes, (weird to see it upside down! ), and in the second shot that's Leo Major taking up most of the bottom half of the image, with Saturn in the middle at the very bottom. So, you've captured your first planetary shot too.

Adrena1in wrote in post #7726779
Nice start, sky looks pretty dark to me. That's the Big Dipper in the first image, yes, (weird to see it upside down! ), and in the second shot that's Leo Major taking up most of the bottom half of the image, with Saturn in the middle at the very bottom. So, you've captured your first planetary shot too.

Thanks for the info Adrena1in.

I will have to look at the original images when I get home from work tonight to see if I can make Saturn out any better. I took the images at full 6 mega pixels and super fine resolution, so hopefully will be able to see a bit more.

I remember the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope. I had a 3" Tasco reflector and I pointed it at one of the brightest things in the sky. At first, I thought it was a spiral galaxy. I was very new at this, and didn't realize at the time that I wouldn't be able to see a galaxy like you see in the pictures. As I started to focus, it slowly turned into Saturn, rings and all. Very cool experience, one that I still remember today. Ranks right up there with seeing the Apollo 11 launch from Cocoa Beach and the Apollo 13 launch from right on NASA grounds.

Al

Chopper Al wrote in post #7727135
I remember the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope. ... Very cool experience, one that I still remember today.

First time I saw it last year was with my 5" f/9.5 refractor, and I was stunned at how big it appeared...assumed you'd need something massive to make out the shape of something that far away, but no, relatively small scopes or lenses can pick it up.

If you can't reveal any of the detail in your image then just whack your largest lens on the camera and try again, using shutter speeds of anywhere from 1/10th to perhaps 1/200th. Saturn might not look much brighter than the stars around it, but you don't need much shutter speed at all to capture it.

Chopper Al wrote in post #7727135
I remember the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope...Very cool experience, one that I still remember today.

Me too, I was about 12 and I still have a feeling of awe just to see it thru a scope everytime.
What Chris said regarding DSS is correct, the stacked image may look dark to you, but you will be able to stretch out alot of info in it. Nice start there though....