my first Andromeda and Stonehenge return

alan72

alan72

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Alan
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I took advantage of the recent few nights of clear skies around the new moon and got out for 2 nights for astro.

Took my first attempt with the tracker at a deep sky object and shot Andromeda. I went down to Iping forest in the South Downs. I took 38 images tracked using the 70-200 f2.8 and canon 5d mkiv at 200mm, f5, 90 seconds each, ISO 1600. Once I discarded the blurry stars I had 22 images to stack. Added 15 each darks and bias frames.

Stacked in DSS and processed in PS following an astrobackyard tutorial on procesing a deep sky image. I'm quite pleased with the result!!! Some learnings for next time, 1. take a chair!! 2. I'll probably use the crop DSLR to get more reach or maybe use my 120-400 but I will need to tape down the zoom to prevent movement., 3. I'll aim to shoot for longer, this will hopefully be easier as it gets dark earlier, and if I can figure out if a light pollution filter will work for this in west london I can even try from the back garden and warmth of my living room!!!

The next night I made a return to stonehenge and took a mosaic / panorama rather than a single wide shot. I've shot astro panoramas before but using single exposures and I wanted to try and up the game. So I got one of the move shoot move / alyn wallce Z brackets to take a tracked panorama. I took 70mm and 40mm mosaics, it wasn;t as scary as I feared, I'd figured out the angle of view of my lens and my ball head has markings so i could easily manage the overlap. The 70mm I wasn;t happy with, the sky was too uneven, I'm not sure if I didn't have enough overlap or the light pollution and mist was too fuzzy. The 40mm I think I like. The overall mosaic was 16 images taken at 40mm, 40 seconds, f2.8, ISO 4000. The final shot is cropped down from the full 16 so this is probably just over a 3x3 mosaic. I'm tempted to get this printed and the extra detail from the mosaic looks quite good full size. I've just realised I forgot to remove the light trails from the security guards bottom right!!! Ha, I'll work on that.

As I've been working on the mosaic I realise just how many galaxies there are withint eh milky way, I really need to get chance to put the long lens on the tracker into the core area of the milky way!

Andromeda by Alan, on Flickr

Stonehenge mosaic - 40mm by Alan, on Flickr
 
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I am glad you finally managed to get out and get the milkyway shots at the Stonehenge.
I have printed mine out and it came out really well.

I still haven't got round to shooting deep sky objects but I shall try the Andromeda later this month (or so is the plan)
 
nandbytes said:
I am glad you finally managed to get out and get the milkyway shots at the Stonehenge.
I have printed mine out and it came out really well.

I still haven't got round to shooting deep sky objects but I shall try the Andromeda later this month (or so is the plan)
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The deep sky objects have for me quite inspired at the moment. I’m itching for the next opportunity to get out into dark skies and try some nebulas!!
 
alan72 said:
I’ve made 2 trips now and I still have more ideas. I’ curious what it’s like early season as the Milky Way rises and you get a different angle. I’ll be back there next year!!
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I think earlier in the season it's in more of a Salisbury direction fighting the light pollution but still might be worth a try though. I've managed some surprising results against light pollution before!
 
alan72 said:
I’ve made 2 trips now and I still have more ideas. I’ curious what it’s like early season as the Milky Way rises and you get a different angle. I’ll be back there next year!!
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Certainly worth multiple visits. I quite liked the slight slanting orientation of mine but would like to try different compositions including the straight upwards like yours.

LeeRatters said:
I think earlier in the season it's in more of a Salisbury direction fighting the light pollution but still might be worth a try though. I've managed some surprising results against light pollution before!
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I have had to battle with light pollution in all the locations I have been to so far apart from Durdle door.
 
nandbytes said:
Certainly worth multiple visits. I quite liked the slight slanting orientation of mine but would like to try different compositions including the straight upwards like yours.


I have had to battle with light pollution in all the locations I have been to so far apart from Durdle door.
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I did buy a LP filter - KF I think - but I need to test it as I'm not sure whether it cuts the pollution or just cools the WB.......!!
 
LeeRatters said:
I did buy a LP filter - KF I think - but I need to test it as I'm not sure whether it cuts the pollution or just cools the WB.......!!
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as far as I know light pollution filters worked well for sodium lights for cutting out a certain wavelength of light.
Recently a lot of places inc. Salisbury have switched to mainly LED lights which have a wider wavelength (cutting out "white light" mean no light ;) )
So LP filters are largely useless.

I did use mine at Durdle door and also Stonehenge. At Stonehenge it made no real difference (at least not large enough that I noticed it).
At Durdle Door I was stupid and forgot to take shots without the filter.
 
nandbytes said:
as far as I know light pollution filters worked well for sodium lights for cutting out a certain wavelength of light.
Recently a lot of places inc. Salisbury have switched to mainly LED lights which have a wider wavelength (cutting out "white light" mean no light ;) )
So LP filters are largely useless.

I did use mine at Durdle door and also Stonehenge. At Stonehenge it made no real difference (at least not large enough that I noticed it).
At Durdle Door I was stupid and forgot to take shots without the filter.
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Yeah, they don't work for the more white style LED but they do on the local streetlights we have here at least.

I think I used mine at Stonehenge as it arrived the day before & I do remember trying it & the image being very blue/purple on the LCD. I do tend to shoot my night skies at a fixed kelvin but I just didn't want to mess around 'testing' it at Stonehenge - I wanted to make sure I got the shots I wanted!

Might be best to try it with & without maybe on an auto WB.
 
LeeRatters said:
Yeah, they don't work for the more white style LED but they do on the local streetlights we have here at least.

I think I used mine at Stonehenge as it arrived the day before & I do remember trying it & the image being very blue/purple on the LCD. I do tend to shoot my night skies at a fixed kelvin but I just didn't want to mess around 'testing' it at Stonehenge - I wanted to make sure I got the shots I wanted!

Might be best to try it with & without maybe on an auto WB.
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I take one or two auto WB test shots to see what the camera thinks but mostly I fix it for the entire night. Can always tweak it in post.
 
Excellent shots. With regards to direction at Stonehenge, can you shoot from sides other than the obvious right of way (which naturally sees you shooting towards Salisbury)?
 
ukaskew said:
Excellent shots. With regards to direction at Stonehenge, can you shoot from sides other than the obvious right of way (which naturally sees you shooting towards Salisbury)?
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I have seen a shot from a guy who is local which was taken looking north and must have been inside the field surrounding Stonehenge. When I was there recently I was chatting to some other photographers and one of them commented that you can write to English heritage to ask for permission to enter the field, but not the stones. Not sure how it would work in reality, if you had to name your date and time etc. I can’t see any other obvious means of shooting.

You can go along the public path to the west and from the copse of trees apparently get a line of site to the stones with a long lens for moonrise, but obviously only when the conditions are clear.
 
Thanks, I only asked because I saw a few comments on another post (not on this forum) where the guys mentioned a treacherous walk along the side of the A303. I couldn't think of a reason why you'd need to be anywhere near the A303!
 
Wonderful, thanks for sharing ;)
 
These are amazing, I would love to do something like this but no idea where to start. Great shots!!
 
ukaskew said:
Thanks, I only asked because I saw a few comments on another post (not on this forum) where the guys mentioned a treacherous walk along the side of the A303. I couldn't think of a reason why you'd need to be anywhere near the A303!
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I was chatting to a guy when I was there last week for the full moon. Apparently the field to the south between the henge and the A303 is national trust and no entry. Occasionally some people will climb over the fence some way from the henge and the security and make their way round to take shots but I imagine you have to be careful of the security guys. I imagine that could be why you would go along the A303 to be able to hop over the fence and work your way up the field. I am not sure if the security are more focussed on keeping people out of the henge itself than the field.

The field to the north of the permissive path is public access and you can walk across to the far side to get those long lens images of the henge with a big moon, but I imagine you need quite a long zoom!!!
 
alan72 said:
I was chatting to a guy when I was there last week for the full moon. Apparently the field to the south between the henge and the A303 is national trust and no entry. Occasionally some people will climb over the fence some way from the henge and the security and make their way round to take shots but I imagine you have to be careful of the security guys. I imagine that could be why you would go along the A303 to be able to hop over the fence and work your way up the field. I am not sure if the security are more focussed on keeping people out of the henge itself than the field.

The field to the north of the permissive path is public access and you can walk across to the far side to get those long lens images of the henge with a big moon, but I imagine you need quite a long zoom!!!
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I can get pretty long.... could you perhaps provide a google map link or coordinates to roughly where you mean?
 
nandbytes said:
I can get pretty long.... could you perhaps provide a google map link or coordinates to roughly where you mean?
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Somewhere around here. The field drops down away from Stonehenge then rises up to the trees on the ridge. You position yourself at a level on the slope where the henge is level on the horizon. My pin is a rough guide. Park on the gravel road and take the gate into the field, the chap I was chatting to was a local and said it was about a 20 min hike across the field and up the far slope.

Last week the mist was so thick you could not see across, he had hiked across and shot from where I was on the permissive path. I’ll share the images in the landscape forum soon.


Dropped pin
 
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