the night sky

[rdking647]

went to pedernales state park to shoot the night sky

a fish eye view. there was a quarter moon in the west when i took the shot,that is the bright orb on the right. on the left is the glow from teh city of austin



looking across the pedernales river



[url=https://flic.kr/p/ptfmBt][img]

the milky way





andromeda and the Pleiades. the Andromeda galaxy is top just left of center and the Pleiades star cluster is bottom center just rising over the light polution


a fish eye view after the moon set

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. These are wonderful!

You must have one hell of a camera........or is it the lens? Anyway, whatever it is, it sure gets the job done.

Amazing!

[rdking647]

7. i used a nikon d600 and a sony a6000

the fisheyes were with the sony and a cheap rokinon manual fish eye
the others were with a tokina 16-28 f2.8 zoom

settings were iso 3200 or 6400 depending on the shot
f2.8 on the zoom f3.5 on the fisheye
exposure of 20 seconds

what results is a low contrast shot
i then used lightroom and aperture to adjust the white balance to 3200-3800 depending on teh shot (the auto wb of cameras tends to give a shot that is to red)
then i adjusted the exposure to center the historgram more or less.
then using levels i adjusted the highlights and shadows.

[elleng]

2. SUPER!!!

[alittlelark]

3. I am in Jemez Springs, NM....

I see that every clear night !! !!


I wish all Du'ers could....

[SheilaT]

4. How long an exposure time?

I live in Santa Fe, where I have pretty clear skies, and it still does not look like that.

I actually get a little frustrated at night sky pictures that are posted that obviously had a much longer exposure time than our eye uses, so it is showing a sky that we cannot possibly see with the naked eye, no matter where we are.

[rdking647]

8. 20 seconds f 2.8 or 3.5 depending on the lens,shot in raw

you have to do some photoshop work to bring out the details,out of the camera its a very low contrast image with the white balance off

[SheilaT]

11. Long exposure and photoshop work.

This is not the night sky any of us actually see. While I appreciate these pictures, as well as the amazing ones from the Hubble, many of which are color-enhanced in some way, I do wish every time pictures like these are posted it's made clear that you can't just go to a nice dark sky location and see exactly that.

I mean, I understand already that these aren't what I see, because I do live with pretty dark skies (Santa Fe, NM), and as lovely as my skies are, they can't hold a candle so to speak to these spectacular images.

[longship]

5. Andromeda!

The Andromeda galaxy is six times the diameter of the moon when viewed from Earth. It is just a whole lot dimmer. I have seen the Andromeda galaxy many times through telescopes. And it is very dim. Usually one only sees its core, unless one has a rather large telescope or a very stable mount, a good astro-camera and a lot of patience.

Or just download a Hubble image.


Or one done by a talented amateur astronomer.

[brer cat]

6. Big K&R

Beautiful, rdking647. Thanks for sharing.

[Solly Mack]

9. Beautiful!

[CrispyQ]

10. Lovely!

[xocet]

12. Nice photos! n/t

[postatomic]

13. rdking647....we've all chipped in and bought you a present!!!!

Great photos!!!

You know I'm just pokin' fun at you. i really could care less if you use caps.

[rdking647]

14. cap letters????

what are those?????? is that something you find in the dictionary (something else i dont use )

[Tom Kitten]

15. I've seen skies similar to this in southern Oregon

Out in the country, not that far from Roseburg. Maybe because the prevailing winds came across thousands of miles of ocean so at the time there was almost no pollution. But this was in the 80s.

I had never seen the Milky Way before and it was brilliant. What a weekend!

Great photos, thanks for sharing!

All I can add is a sky like that is the perfect blanket to make love under.