Southern Auriga and a bit of Gemini and Taurus
The Sun appears in this part of the sky on June 21, so it's best to photograph it in winter from the Northern Hemisphere.
The star cluster in the upper left is M35 in Gemini. Heading to the right from there, we get M37, M36, and M38 in Auriga. The reddish areas below M38 are the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) and the Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405). The Crab Nebula (M1) shows up as a little blob in the the lower left. Elnath is the bright star at the center toward the bottom.
This is from a stack of 27 60 s exposures at ISO 4000 taken with an astro-modded Nikon D5100 with a 70-300 mm lens at focal length 70 mm. The camera was on an omegon Mini-track LX2. Images had dark frames subtracted before they were registered and stacked in PixInsight. Further processing took place in PI before moving on to GIMP for finial touches.
I don't remember having this much trouble with distortion at the edges of the frame with this lens before. It's there on the individual shots as well, so it's not a stacking artifact. I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to shoot this region from dark skies again, but I'll have to try with a different lens.
Southern Auriga and a bit of Gemini and Taurus
The Sun appears in this part of the sky on June 21, so it's best to photograph it in winter from the Northern Hemisphere.
The star cluster in the upper left is M35 in Gemini. Heading to the right from there, we get M37, M36, and M38 in Auriga. The reddish areas below M38 are the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) and the Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405). The Crab Nebula (M1) shows up as a little blob in the the lower left. Elnath is the bright star at the center toward the bottom.
This is from a stack of 27 60 s exposures at ISO 4000 taken with an astro-modded Nikon D5100 with a 70-300 mm lens at focal length 70 mm. The camera was on an omegon Mini-track LX2. Images had dark frames subtracted before they were registered and stacked in PixInsight. Further processing took place in PI before moving on to GIMP for finial touches.
I don't remember having this much trouble with distortion at the edges of the frame with this lens before. It's there on the individual shots as well, so it's not a stacking artifact. I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to shoot this region from dark skies again, but I'll have to try with a different lens.