Utah Astrophotography
Magnificent Sawtooths
Have some mixed emotions about this picture, the whole trip to Idaho I wanted to capture an image portraying the scale and awesomeness of the Sawtooth Mountains along with the big beautiful Milky Way behind them. The last night I was there I made sure to time it right so the core of the Milky Way and the Rho Ophiuchi complex were directly overhead the mountains. This would only leave me about an hour of shooting before astronomical twilight began. With my 24mm lens it was quickly apparent that it would not do justice to the magnitude of the mountains and the Milky Way, everything just appears "small" at that focal length.
So I switched to my 85mm f1.4 lens, probably my second favorite astro lens behind the 24mm. This meant I'd have to shoot a lot more shots to get it all in frame though. So I ended up doing 3 rows, 4 shots per row, in all the time it took to get setup and start shooting some high thin clouds moved in over the horizon. That in combination with the ridiculous airglow meant I lost a ton of detail, particularly in the Rho Ophiuchi complex, which frustrates the hell out of me. It also makes Mars, Saturn, and Antares appear utterly massive and other stars look blobby, again not what I wanted. I did manage to capture a nice meteor streaking through the Ophiuchi region though.
Given the number of shots it took the final resolution came out to ~17,000x~9,000 pixels, so you could print this up to 85 inches or so at a good PPI, which is pretty awesome.
Each image is a 3 minute exposure at ISO 400 and f2.5 shot with my Nikon D600 and Rokinon 85mm f1.4 lens, sky shots had my iOptron Skytracker mount turned on.
Magnificent Sawtooths
Have some mixed emotions about this picture, the whole trip to Idaho I wanted to capture an image portraying the scale and awesomeness of the Sawtooth Mountains along with the big beautiful Milky Way behind them. The last night I was there I made sure to time it right so the core of the Milky Way and the Rho Ophiuchi complex were directly overhead the mountains. This would only leave me about an hour of shooting before astronomical twilight began. With my 24mm lens it was quickly apparent that it would not do justice to the magnitude of the mountains and the Milky Way, everything just appears "small" at that focal length.
So I switched to my 85mm f1.4 lens, probably my second favorite astro lens behind the 24mm. This meant I'd have to shoot a lot more shots to get it all in frame though. So I ended up doing 3 rows, 4 shots per row, in all the time it took to get setup and start shooting some high thin clouds moved in over the horizon. That in combination with the ridiculous airglow meant I lost a ton of detail, particularly in the Rho Ophiuchi complex, which frustrates the hell out of me. It also makes Mars, Saturn, and Antares appear utterly massive and other stars look blobby, again not what I wanted. I did manage to capture a nice meteor streaking through the Ophiuchi region though.
Given the number of shots it took the final resolution came out to ~17,000x~9,000 pixels, so you could print this up to 85 inches or so at a good PPI, which is pretty awesome.
Each image is a 3 minute exposure at ISO 400 and f2.5 shot with my Nikon D600 and Rokinon 85mm f1.4 lens, sky shots had my iOptron Skytracker mount turned on.