Tonight I took a photo of the Milky Way, Saturn and Jupiter from the northern edge of Lake Constance towards Switzerland and the Alps. The image is a single shot with an EOS6D plus a 14mm Samyang lens (exposure time 15s, ISO 6400). I post processed the frame with Raw Therapee and with GIMP.
Clear skies!
Recently it happened that I caught Comet Neowise and ISS (International Space Station) in one shot – just by accident! The results, and how that happened I describe in this little article…
 | Date | 2019/02/01 |
 | Location | La Palma / Spain |
 | Object | Milky Way |
 | Camera | EOS6D + Samyang 2.8/14mm |
 | Guiding | no |
 | Telescope | - |
 | Barlow lens | none |
 | Mount | EQ6Syntrek |
 | Cooling | - |
 | Luminance | 6x |
 | Red | - |
 | Green | - |
 | Blue | - |
 | Dark | 3x |
 | Flat | - |
 | Total exposure | ~15min. |
Once more back on La Palma / Spain. I imaged the Milky Way a few times before from this beautiful location. However, up to now I was always bound to a maximum exposure time of about 20 seconds due to the earth rotation. This time I decided to put the camera – an EOS6D with a Samyang 2.8/14mm lens – on top of an EQ6 mount. This way much longer exposure times with a lower ISO value (i.e. less noise in the image) were possible without getting any star trails. I took 6 frames with ISO 1600 á 148 seconds each. The total exposure time is therefore about 15 minutes.
The frames were then post-processed with rawtherapee and averaged using the ImageMagick “convert” tool. In addition 4 frames of the foreground (the house) were taken and also averaged (of course with disabled EQ6 mount). Finally the two pictures were overlaid and merged with the help of a mask using gimp.
To me it is amazing to see the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the California Nebula (NGC1499), the Orion Nebula (M42), the Pleiades (M45) and the Horsehead Nebula (B33) clearly on this photo. This overview picture gives a good idea of the brightness, size and exact location of the objects compared to each other.
A full resolution image of the result can be found here. Another image without object descriptions can be found here. I am curious to repeat this procedure in summer when the bright part of the Milky Way will be visible again 🙂
Last updated: May 18, 2022 at 8:37 am
It’s stargazing time on La Palma again – this time from Casa Las Flores. The little house is located in Aguatavar – close to Tijarafe on a height of about 580m. You have a power supply outside the building, free view to Polaris from both terraces and in July the bright part of the Milky Way is perfectly visible between 22:00 and 4:00 local time. Furthermore you have a coffee maker, a table, chairs, a fast WLAN internet connection and a barbecue. What else do you need? 😀
The image is a single frame recorded with an Canon EOS6D in combination with a Samyang 2.8/14mm lens (15 sec. exposure time, ISO4000) . The post processing has been done with rawtherapee.
Tonight I only test my equipment – for tomorrow I plan to record the bright nebula M8 in the milkyway. So stay tuned for the result!
Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:10 pm