Shooting a meteor shower last night

[Jon Lazar]

Jessy,

The milky way galaxy is a lot easier to see than you might think...it's the largest object in the sky. The picture on the right is a computer generated picture of the night sky from San Diego on 12 August. Not every star is in the program's database, but you can orient yourself by the groupings circled in yellow. The milky way is the cloudy streak of light that runs from top to bottom across the computer-generated picture.

The orange and violet areas in your photo are cultural lighting from nearby cities, but you can clearly make out light splotches in your photo from the milky way.

 

[BlueCorn]

You can, absolutely, see and photograph the milky way but I think that you'd have a tough time in Socal due to the amount of light pollution.

I took this at the base of Mt. Whitney on during a new moon.

 

[Jessy.]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15531600#post15531600 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Jon Lazar
Jessy,

The milky way galaxy is a lot easier to see than you might think...it's the largest object in the sky. The picture on the right is a computer generated picture of the night sky from San Diego on 12 August. Not every star is in the program's database, but you can orient yourself by the groupings circled in yellow. The milky way is the cloudy streak of light that runs from top to bottom across the computer-generated picture.

The orange and violet areas in your photo are cultural lighting from nearby cities, but you can clearly make out light splotches in your photo from the milky way.

Holy CRAP!! I think you're right! I would have never believed it til you pointed out the stars in the circle. The smudges line up pretty perfectly with where the milky way is. Thank you so much for taking the time out to research that!

You can, absolutely, see and photograph the milky way but I think that you'd have a tough time in Socal due to the amount of light pollution.

I took this at the base of Mt. Whitney on during a new moon.

That is an awesome pic! And I would agree with you on the light pollution thing if I didn't know how far I had to drive into no where to get this pic. There were no street lights and really no lights on the horizon but those tiny ones you see out there in the distance

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...117.018127&spn=0.291308,0.624161&z=11&iwloc=A

 

[Mchava]

WOW Jessy & beerguy nice shots, better then mine. This is the best I could do when I was in VA last month, not as wide as Beerguy. Here check it out

 

[Jessy.]

Hmmm now you have me wondering if I go to the beach and point my camera out to the horizon...would I get a pic of the Milky Way over the ocean?

 

[Jessy.]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15531841#post15531841 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Mchava
WOW Jessy & beerguy nice shots, better then mine. This is the best I could do when I was in VA last month, not as wide as Beerguy. Here check it out

Nice what was your EXIF data on that one?

 

[Mchava]

well dont know how to figure that out but here is what the picture's info says
it was shoot with the canon 50mm f/1.8 lense

 

[Jessy.]

thanks that's what I was looking for.

 

[aquariumclown]

Why'd you shoot it at iso 1600 Mario?

 

[Mchava]

I wanted to get as much info as possible with out getting to much startrails. At 20sec I start to get star trails and everything starts to look blurry.

 

[aquariumclown]

I see, must be because your not shooting as wide.

 

[Mchava]

yup, if I had a wider lens then I would have shoot at a shorter ISO

 

[Jon Lazar]

Hmmm now you have me wondering if I go to the beach and point my camera out to the horizon...would I get a pic of the Milky Way over the ocean?

Jessy,

I would use a night sky program to help choose the best time for you to experiment with astrophotography. You can figure out when the moon is out and will make the night sky too bright...or choose to shoot the moon on those nights. You can also predict when the milky way or other celestial objects will be in the right part of the sky to prevent overexposure from cultural lighting. There are lots of free programs; the one I used here was stellarium. There may be others that are better.

Best,
Jon

 

[taichimaster]

those are some amazing shots...wish I knew how to do that.