Milky Way from High Halden

[MarkS]

The Milky Way from High Halden on an exceptional night.  35mm Nikon lens at F4 on modded Canon 400D. 15x200sec exposures at ISO 800.  
No light pollution filter was used .



I've subtracted as much light pollution as possible but that has the effect of "amplifying" the red glow from Tenterden.   The stars at the bottom of the image have not stacked properly because of differential atmospheric refraction between the subs.  The smeared cluster M6 at the bottom of the image is only 5deg above the horizon.  So there's a lot wrong with the image but I still like it enough to post it.

Here's a bigger version, scaled by 2/3 from the original size:
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2014/milkyway24072012.jpg

Mark

[MarkH]

Superb Mark!

[JohnP]

Looks excellent to me Mark and reminds me I must get round to modifying the 400D I have in my bottom draw at work... especially if I can get results anything like that...

Top image - John

[Fay]

very nice Mark. i must get my act together!

[The Thing]

You are far too picky Mark, that's excellent.

You could always ask Alan Kyedah [avoid CIA picking this up in their scans!] to nuke Tenterden but you can't change what nature is doing to the light close to the horizon so accept it! The only way I can see the image being any better would be if you did a mosaic and used an ADC set differently for each altitude to correct the atmospheric dispersion.

[julian]

very nice Mark. i must get my act together!

And Me!!!!

very nice

[MarkS]

Milky Way would be perfectly placed (i.e. due south at 1am) for a potential uDSC at Running Waters end of June

[Fay]

oh dear i have relatives from the north coming down!

[Mike]

Wow that's really effective Mark.  Great picture.

[The Thing]

oh dear i have relatives from the north coming down!

Get them to bring a tent and 'come down' a bit further with you

[Fay]

Mark you would have to have used a cls in my garden !

[MarkS]

Mark you would have to have used a cls in my garden !

And chop your trees down!

[Fay]

tell me about it!

[Fay]

mark how was your milky way from running waters? i think you did one there

[MarkS]

mark how was your milky way from running waters? i think you did one there

I was concentrating on the area around Antares.  I managed 4 exposures before the iOptron batteries failed.  Once I realised and replaced the batteries I got 6 exposures of a different part of the sky because I forgot to re-frame the image and these had varying amounts of hazy cloud.  All in all a disaster

However, that aside, the sky quality in terms of darkness was excellent.