I started this thread in the Landscape forum, some of you may have seen this already, if not enjoy.
Hey all you fine folks, last night I went out with a friend to a dark sky and shot some more deep space images. Shown here is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pliades (M45) photographed with my D700 & NO NOISE REDUCTION WAS USED for these images. Both were single 7 minute exposures at ISO 400 and there is no noise at all...AWESOME! The scope used was a BORG Astrograph, a 4-inch ED refractor at a FL of 390mm f/4. I tracked the scope on my Celestron mount. Used the MC-36 remote timer for the 7min exp. The fact that the outside temp was aroung 40º kept the CMOS cold and thus keeping noise away. Enjoy...
GORGEOUS captures! I'm very jealous of your shot of the Pliades cluster... I tried to get a similar shot with sloppy results a few days ago during the Leonid meteor shower. Must... resist... the urge... to buy a D700!
Really nice shots. What I am more impresed about is that you have a nice telescope setup and that you have access to dark skies.
I'm jealous on all accounts.
Wow, when I first saw the before reading your post I thought they were some satellite images...they look like something that came from NASA. Amazing job man.
I tried to shoot stars before but fails. I used 30 secs exposure but since the earth was orbitting all the stars leaves a tail on my picture. Drove me nuts. How did u take these!?
Thank you all for your cool comments. I am glad you enjoyed looking at them. I do have more at www.toddhargisphotography.com in the astronomy gallery. Also there is more at www.pbase.com/todd991 in the astronomy gallery there. Thanks again dudes!
Good stuff, Todd, but the JPEG compression artefacts look a bit like sensor noise at our end. I think these would look a lot cleaner with JPEG files around half a megabyte or more.
Outstanding Todd. It's amazing how much detail you can capture through a little 4" refractor.
Did you shoot these prime focus right through the scope or are you using an eyepiece to increase magnification at all? M31 seems to fill way too much of the frame for 390mm.
I thought I saw a star the other night, but it was only a light on a plane. Both dippers are too dim to be seen anymore. But we can read newspapers on the curb!
