Starry Starry Night

View of the milky way in the southern sky

PhotoProject :: Mapping the night sky

I have had a personal project for a while of trying to map the night sky, the southern half of the milky way. i have a great vanatge point at venus bay and when the night is clear and moonless I brave the cool and take a number if long exposure shoots. then my ambition is to stitch them altogether and create a map of the visiable sky (like our eye sees it rather tan through a telescope. It can be  pretty damn amazing.

However I have found myself up against a numbers of technical issues. Trying to solve these will probably make interesting reading so I’ll post a little about my progress or lack of here, from time to time. The first issue is most panorama stitching software refuses to stitch stars on a black background. The exception is when I have a section of the horizon dimly lit as above which cover from due south to due east

More Milky Way Mapping

This is quite a large segment of the milky way, now largely overhead. It covers from almost the northern horizon to well over head. Made of 5 photos combined with autostitch with auto straighten turned off. (The image below has it turned on)

Under the Milky Way

 

The Milky Way is high above us in the southern hemisphere at the moment and a moonless night without clouds gave me the opportunity to experiment with some autostitch panoramas of the milky way. 

Under the Southern Cross

The dark skies allowed a great views of the milky way. the southern cross is high on the right hand image. This joiner style collage was created with Picasa.

Southern Cross at the Tropic of Capricorn

Southern Cross at the Tropic of Capricorn I, originally uploaded by imageo.

This image of the milky way, including the southern cross, low on the horizon is an autostitched multi-image panorama based on 14 separate long exposure images


For PhotoFriday‘s topic After Dark

Waiting for the Aurora

Milky Way Panorama 1, originally uploaded by imageo.

The K-index has been 3 and over for the past few days which signals there is a possibility that the Aurora Australia will be visible from the southern coast of Victoria. Well it rained a lot but between breaks I got good views of the milky way arcing across the sky. Both these images are prepared from a sets of photos and stitched with Autostitch.

milky Way Panorama 2, originally uploaded by imageo.

Starry, Starry Night

Some experiments with trying to map the sky at night. Using a set of 15 second exposures. Autostitch is actually up to the task, providing you have something detailed in the foregrounds, but I much prefer the warmer tines of my simple picasa picture pile collage.

Genie, ….in a box & the nightsky

How about this for a remarkably clever little device.

Thanks to +Trey Ratcliff, at google+ for the heads up on this. You can contact the NZ makers at syrp.co.nz

I’ve been out a bit the past few nights just hoping for a glimpse of the aurora austarils, as there have been some extreme magnetic storms occurring, the Australian weather bureau actually have a great space weather forecast site. No luck on that aurora front in Melbourne though, but I have managed some interesting long exposures and was even contemplating how to make a time lapse sequence of the night sky. (Now I realize there might be an easier way, with the help of a little genie, plus the near $1,000 price tag!)

   

PhotoFriday :: Skytracks

Can you figure out what the unidentified track might be in the night sky?  (I do know by the way). Taken at ISO 6400 at 30 second exposure on a dark but very starry night,

For PhotoFriday‘s topic In Motion

Photographing the night sky

Taking decent photos of the night sky with a digital camera is slightly harder than finding night mode. There is a fair bit of good advice on the net but it is mainly aimed at the use of traditional film in 35mm SLR cameras. Fast film, open the aperture right up and long exposures, even special film. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
 
The main checklist of important issue for the digital photographer are – 1) a tripod, to keep the camera steady during a long exposure, 2) a B (Bulb) setting (to allow extended time exposures) & 3) a cable release or remote control to avoid camera shake.  Then maybe turn off auto focus and set the focus manually to extreme distance and maybe take off that UV or skylight filter. There are a few good extra hints and tips here.

The stargazers

These long exposure photos where taken at the Monash Gallery of Art after a Talk And workshop about the project Syzygy/Shadows of Heaven (work-in-progress). Which was an interesting idea, where photographic plates are contact printed under other photographic “templates” (other photographic plates, including original startfield photoplates from Mount Stromlo ) used as negatives under just start light. The plates where laid out on tarpaline on Lake Tyrrell in the mallee, on nights that had no moon or no significant planet light, so it was just start light exposing the film. The resulting images are beautifully detailed.