Jay:Dee
Mars, Saturn, Antares & Friends
Here's a partially successful attempt at stacking intended to reduce the visibility of the the light cloud that persisted all evening. There's still too much haze for my liking, however the final product is better than any of the individual 15 light frames. I limited the shutter speed to 10 seconds to reduce the visibility of the clouds, although in hindsight it may have been better to go longer so that the Milky Way became visible. Messier 4 is easily seen to the right of Antares at the lower left of the image. Only the brightest stars of Messier 80 are visible; M80 roughly forms an isosceles triangle with Antares and Saturn, the latter at the upper left of the image. A surprise guest is the open star cluster NGC 5897, a barely visible tiny fuzzy patch to the right of Mars on the right side of the image.
The exposures were taken with a Canon 70D using the long exposure noise reduction features, which negated the need to take separate dark frames. The stack, compiled using DeepSkyStacker, includes 10 flat frames and 10 bias frames. The camera was mounted on an iOptron SkyTracker and the camera was fitted with a Sigma 50mm ART lens. All exposures were shot at f/1.4, ISO 800 in RAW format. Taken in Lake St. Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, July 23rd 2016.
Mars, Saturn, Antares & Friends
Here's a partially successful attempt at stacking intended to reduce the visibility of the the light cloud that persisted all evening. There's still too much haze for my liking, however the final product is better than any of the individual 15 light frames. I limited the shutter speed to 10 seconds to reduce the visibility of the clouds, although in hindsight it may have been better to go longer so that the Milky Way became visible. Messier 4 is easily seen to the right of Antares at the lower left of the image. Only the brightest stars of Messier 80 are visible; M80 roughly forms an isosceles triangle with Antares and Saturn, the latter at the upper left of the image. A surprise guest is the open star cluster NGC 5897, a barely visible tiny fuzzy patch to the right of Mars on the right side of the image.
The exposures were taken with a Canon 70D using the long exposure noise reduction features, which negated the need to take separate dark frames. The stack, compiled using DeepSkyStacker, includes 10 flat frames and 10 bias frames. The camera was mounted on an iOptron SkyTracker and the camera was fitted with a Sigma 50mm ART lens. All exposures were shot at f/1.4, ISO 800 in RAW format. Taken in Lake St. Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, July 23rd 2016.