You don't need a telescope

I share a lot of the images I take with people that don't really know the constellations and stars, but enjoy seeing them in my photographs. So I label them so they will understand what all is in the photos they are looking at.

This was taken with the camera on a standard tripod from my back yard in far south Dallas, Texas - plenty of light pollution! I was comparing the difference in images with the HDR turned on with what it looked like without it.

This was a 5 second exposure, with the kit 18 - 55mm zoom lens on my Nikon D5200 camera, set to 18mm.

These three images were combined to show the movement of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus during the month of December, 2015. For the last one, I used my Scotch mount to take a longer exposure. It resulted in a lot more faint stars and they are a lot sharper, too.

The Pleiades

December 14, 2015 This is a 2 second exposure with the camera mounted on a standard tripod, taken through all the light pollution in south Dallas, Texas.
Again, I mess up the pictures with labels so the people I send them to will know what part of the sky is shown.

Impressive, great result without a tracker.

LMC, 5D3 + 70-200mm F2.8 @ 200mm & F3.5, 30x 1.6 sec exposures + 30 darks, lens corrected in Canon DPP, then stacked in DSS.

NO TRACKER. Btw, is there a thread 'You dont need a tracker' ?

SMC + 47 TUC, 5D3 + 70-200mm F2.8 @ 200mm & F3.5, 30x 1.6 sec exposures + 30 darks, lens corrected in Canon DPP, then stacked in DSS.

NO TRACKER. I dont have a telescope (yet).

Star trails in suburbia.

5D3 + 24-70mm L II @ 24mm, F7. 140x images @ 2mins each, lens corected in Canon DPP then staked in either STARTRAILS or STARSTAX (I use both). I animated this too.

Animation of the pic above
http://arcoonastudios.​zenfolio.com/p68717932​8/h58a3298b

ORION, 5D3 + 70-200mm F2.8 @ 200mm & F3.5, 30x 1.6 sec exposures + 30 darks, lens corrected in Canon DPP, then stacked in DSS.

NO TRACKER.

ANDROMEDA, 600D + 85mm F1.2 @ F1.8, 30x 4 sec exposures + 30 darks, iso 12800, lens corrected in Canon DPP, then stacked in DSS.

NO TRACKER. This was an early one for me, with my old 600D camera, I am sure I can do better. This object was only 10° above the horizon, and too close to sunrise when it was taken. Should be easy with the 5D3.

I have no idea if there is a thread for 'No Tracker'. I've only been a member a few days and I'm still exploring to see what all is available.

That is the LMC??? I'm surprised it's so disorganized. I haven't had much experience with DSS. The last time I tried to stack 14 light frames, I got an error message that I didn't have enough memory. Don't know why, I have 16GB of memory, and that's all my computer will accept. I haven't tried DSS with dark frames or flat dark and flat light frames... just stacked light frames. You have some impressive images with such short exposures!

I have a 5" Meade telescope, but found out I don't need it to take the kind of pictures I like most - - - wide-angle shots. I've taken a lot of pictures of Orion, but haven't been able to get the colors you have in your shot... Is that the result of stacking a bunch of exposures?

With a telescope I wouldn't have gotten the deer.

Re DSS, I only stack the 16bit tiffs that are outputted from Canon DPP as a result of lof the lens correction process. The DPP process also gives me a chance to make absolutely sutre that all the chroma and luma denoising and any sharpening is completely disabled prior to the export to tiff.

note, ordinary photo denoising kills stars.

I think I had trouble importing Canon raw .cr2 files to DPP, but, tiffs are ok.

Stacking is the way of denoising hi iso shots (I have shot astro sucessfuly @ iso 51200 and beyond) whilst preserving stars. Make sure all noise correction and sharpening is turned off in every step of the process. Make sure you shoot your darks (lens cap on) immediately after the images, so the sensor is still warm. The darks are stacked in DPP and subracted from the staked images.

There is heaps of stuff to image, just need dark skies.

Tarantula Nebulae, 5D3 + 100-400mm L II @400mm, F5.6, 30x 1sec + 30 darks @ iso 51200, lens corrected in DPP, then sacked in DSS.

No tracker used.

Moon, 600D + 100-400mm L II @400mm + 1.4× TC, iso 100, uncorrected and unprocessed, just cropped sooc.