Here are a couple from last week. First up, here’s a widefield view of the Milky Way- taken at 18mm on my 18-55 zoom. I did one of these about 4 months ago- it’s nice to catch the ‘next bit’ of the galaxy so to speak. This is an hours worth of 60 second exposures.
With hindsight I think I’d have been better off stopping it down a bit (this was f3) and going for, say, 30 2 minute exposures, as it was a swine to focus and the star shapes at the edges of the frame are more like fans. Still- it’s been nice to work my way around the frame and pick out some familiar objects- here’s an annotated version below:
A bit more successful was this slightly tighter view taken with the 50mm lens on the 15th when Neil came over and was working on his rather splendid Rosette. Again- this was an hours worth of 60 second exposures at f3.5, but the lens made a better job of keeping things sharp(ish).
The plan on this one was to be looking out past the edge of our galaxy at Andromeda (coming to get us!), but I haven’t been able to pick up of a drop off in the star density to pick up the edge of the galaxy. I might try this one again one day from a darker site. I still like this image a little better than the wider one as the objects in it are a bit more distinct- Pacman is really clear, Caroline’s Rose is quite prominent and you can see the dark nebulae of our galaxy.
