One of the things awaiting my return was a new 55mm f/1.4 lens for my D5000. The advantage of this lens is the low “f number,” which means that it has a large aperture, which means that it gathers a lot of light, which means that it can take low-light photos. More relevantly to me, it can take photos of the night sky with a much shorter exposure than my existing lenses… which means, in the absence of a motorized equatorial mount, much less “streaking” of stars.
Tonight I tested it out for the first time. Sadly, it’s pretty hazy out there, but it’s good enough for some preliminary tests. Here, for example, is Orion with a 2 second exposure and an ISO of 3200:
Even with the haze, it’s pretty spiffy.
Something I’ve wanted for a long time (for reasons which seem good to me) is a good, clear photo showing Orion and the Pleiades together. While I’ll certainly do this again on a darker, less hazy night, this still came out pretty damn well (some brightness & contrast tweaking to get rid of the haze):
My guess is that the haze is responsible for the large, blobby appearance of the brighter stars.
As a bonus, here are some shots of Koshka taken with the same lens, in relatively dark rooms and no flash. Without this lens, these’d be pretty dark. One of the effects of low f-number is that the depth of field is pretty small. Outside of a narrow band of distance from the camera, things get blurry pretty fast.
4 Responses to “Astrophotography: new and improved”
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Those came out really great despite the haze!
It seems to be really good at picking up the color of the individual stars also, and some of the nebulosity around the Pleiades.
Boy, you clamped that camera on a 8″ Celestron, and the results would knock your eyes out.
Can’t wait to see what you can do with top-notch seeing conditions.
> you clamped that camera on a 8″ Celestron
I have a 4″ (??) Celestron, and have a cheap T-mount on order. The Celestron is on one of those computer-controlled bases. Seemed like a good idea, but “sturdy” does not seem to have been one of the design requirements.
> Can’t wait to see what you can do with top-notch seeing conditions.
Same here. However, weather has not been co-operating.
That should not only be great for astronomy, but its modest size will make it a very useful and easily transported scope for your nature photography as well.
The 8″ one was about the max size you could haul around in a car, and doing that took a walloping big padded case.
The t-mount arrived today. Much to my surprise, everything fit properly, and it all seems to work. However, focussing remains a problem, as does the weather.