Starry OZ

[emlee]

very informative thread. thanks for sharing, really.
I am also curious to know which part of australia was this?

 

[Tachyon]

Hey dude, wish I had a telescope then. Didn't really have a astronomer company around to spread the task load...

You can always borrow my WO 66mm!

 

[Zichar]

Always love stars
With the 12 apostles, I figured it's somewhere on the Great Ocean Road, i.e. he went to Melbourne and drove out?

 

[jiahao1986]

very informative thread. thanks for sharing, really.
I am also curious to know which part of australia was this?

Always love stars
With the 12 apostles, I figured it's somewhere on the Great Ocean Road, i.e. he went to Melbourne and drove out?

Hi folks,

Thanks for the compliments. I did drive around the Great Ocean Road, where I got the shot of the London Bridge. The first few eclipse and milkyway shots are taken in Central Australia, 1/3 of the way between Alice Springs and Uluru(Ayer's Rock).

 

[jiahao1986]

You can always borrow my WO 66mm!

Dude I did think of that, but I would have too much to carry myself. My companies this time had zero to minus interest in Astro...

 

[fz30_user]

very very beautiful! :thumbsup:

how much is that gear to do the tracking?

 

[torment]

Hey guys, photos #3, 4 and 5 actually don't come out so straightforward. Apart from a decent camera body (5D Mark II for my case) and wide lens (Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye I used), you need a tracking device, which is simply a single-axis motor rotating at the speed of our earth's rotation, to counter the effect of star-trailing in long exposures. Without this device, 5-minute exposures as in photo #3, 4 and 5 will end up as long startrails. A photo of the device I used is shown as below:

The tricky part of using this device is to align precisely the rotating axis with the earth axis, which will easily take half to one hour in southern hemisphere. If you don't have this device and experience, you can achieve similar shots by blowing the aperture wide open to, say f/2.8, and ISO to 3200, take a 30s to 1min exposure at such settings, then you can get a more noisy image with worse edge quality, but with comparable details.

What exposure did you have for those pics? Whenever i look into the sk i never see that many stars. Always assumed it must have been a very long exposure or something.

 

[jiahao1986]

very very beautiful! :thumbsup:

how much is that gear to do the tracking?

Hi, thanks for the kind words. The tracking mount cost around S$300. I also purchased a Manfrotto 410 gear head to mount it for easy adjustments, which costs me another S$300.

What exposure did you have for those pics? Whenever i look into the sk i never see that many stars. Always assumed it must have been a very long exposure or something.

Hi, the three starry shots are all 5 min exposures at 15mm f/4 ISO800, and you are right, they show more stars than what you see with naked eyes, but not too much exaggeration.

 

[kirkteo]

Beautifully done. I stayed in Toowoomba Queensland for 3 years few years ago, but that time I have not started out shooting. will go again 1 of these days to do that.

 

[torment]

Hi, the three starry shots are all 5 min exposures at 15mm f/4 ISO800, and you are right, they show more stars than what you see with naked eyes, but not too much exaggeration.

So the camera is picking up stars that we cant see with the naked eye?

 

[jiahao1986]

Beautifully done. I stayed in Toowoomba Queensland for 3 years few years ago, but that time I have not started out shooting. will go again 1 of these days to do that.

Hi, thanks for the comments. I'm sure Queensland got beautiful night sky as well. Just pick a moonless night and revisit the place. Have fun shooting!

So the camera is picking up stars that we cant see with the naked eye?

Yes you are right. Long exposures capture fainter light from the universe, which is the whole point of photo astronomy.