Last night I took some more photos of the night sky trying to get an image of the Milky Way. I then spent many happy hours trying to get a piece of software to blend them together. Failed several times and ended up merging them myself using Photoshop.
This is the result below. There was some cloud again last night but as I mentioned before with long exposures the star light still comes through bright and clear. Shining brightly was Deneb so I was pointing the camera in the right direction.
This is the part of the Cygnus constellation which is part of the Milky Way. The bright star in the top middle is Deneb. (Alpha Cygni or Arided) It is a supergiant star.
Hundreds of time bigger than our Sun it is 38.8 AU (Astronomical units) away from us. That's 3.5323207 x 10 to the 9 Miles. Travelling at the speed of light (186,282 per second) It would take 2,600 years to reach Deneb.
It's full of stars
I uploaded the image to Astrometry to get the details of what I had captured and this was the result.
Deneb in the Milky Way
For those of you with a technical interest here are the results of the star field search conducted by the Astrometry software.
B = 0 0 5.437e-07
0 1.0552e-06
-2.4501e-07
AP = -0.00078249 5.6096e-06 -5.752e-07
1.4023e-05 -3.9916e-07
-1.0791e-06
BP = -0.00072359 7.2825e-06 -5.4331e-07
-1.595e-06 -1.0548e-06
2.4517e-07
sqrt(det(CD))=16.4639 [arcsec]
Found tag-along columns from field: FLUX BACKGROUND
Field 1: solved with index index-217.fits.
Field 1: tried 566 quads, matched 6200 codes.
Spent 2.052 s user, 0.38 s system, 2.432 s total, 2.43232 s wall time.
Writing 26 rows (of 4971 field and 27 index objects) to correspondence file.
cx<=dx constraints: 0
meanx constraints: 2482
RA,Dec constraints: 0
AB scale constraints: 0
Spent 2.44821 seconds on this field.
Where is Deneb now?
Having seen the details of my photos. I wondered where that particular constelation was right now on the galactic plain.
Using the American Astronomical Society Worldwide telescope I found my photo up there amongst the stars. Which was pretty cool. I must admit.
This image above is of my photo of the Cygnes constellation mapped onto the current night sky. It's cloudy again tonight but I'll have another go at capturing the whole Milky Way as it is pretty spectacular if you get it right now as it forms an arc across the whole of the eastern horizon.
Now that would be a shot.
What a cool shot and how cool is that sight that they can map the shot you got to show where it is now I never knew one could do that
Thanks Jay, I hope to capture enough data soon to create one of those fab Milky Way photos. I think I need about 20 to 30 RAW images to get a very detailed final image. (watch this space! lol)
The A.A.S. worldwide telescope is a super cool website and well worth a look.
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Thank you @astrosteem team. I will pop in and see who I can support.
You're welcome Michael :-)
Awesome shot Michael :-)
I've not tried the American Astronomical Society Worldwide telescope yet by myself, but I think I will give it a try with my next project, which I hope to be able to start in August. Until then I need to do a lot of handcraft for the new controlling computer.
Automatic stacking is a little tricky with wide fields. Sometimes it works but most of the time there are some errors.
Very nice to see what improvements you're making.
Thank you Kevin :-)
The auto stacking software is for sure very tricky. I now have a much better plan on what to shoot and when so these tests have been very helpful to figure thngs out.
The American Astronomical Society Worldwide telescope is a very useful resource with lots of very useful information but I did notice that both the A.A.S. and Astrometry have invalid security certificates which was kind of odd. Maybe someone forgot to update the certificates.
It's not a problem as we don't put any personal data on either website but thought I should mention it just in case you use it.
This month we have some great photo opportunities with Jupiter in opposition. I might try to get the Moons of Jupiter.
Can't wait to see the results of your new configuration in August.
You're welcome Michael :-)
That's great to hear. Planing shots is a very difficult job. But it helps a lot to figure out what setting lead to which result.
I think astrometry.net hasn't an SSL certificate. A.A.S. seems to work properly. Which browser do you use?
As you say, it should be safe as we do not transmit any personal data, just the image itself.
I must confess, I also forgot to select the new certificate on the web hoster interface of our website at work :-D
I hope to be able to do a little bit of wide field with my DSLR
Thank you very much Michael. I hope that I have some luck an will be abe to collect some data.
I never have any luck taking photos of the night sky, I am glad you ended up with such a great one!!
Hey Debra, good to hear from you again and thank you for your warm comment.
The more I practice the better the images are getting...I hope.
I still have a long way to go to get the images I can see in my mind.
Amazing capture!
Thank you Red :-)
We spent our day at the planetarium today. No mention of the swan constellation. I will have to ask the presenter to point it out next time. That said it might not be in our sky at the moment. I'd love to learn how to read and map stars but there goes another must learn list. Steemit opens up so many opportunities for that:)
Maybe they don't know that Cygnus is from the Greek for swan as you know? It is in the sky right now if you look east south east. On a clear night you can see Deneb with the naked eye.
At midnight it is slap bang in the middle observable portion of the Milky Way. You should be able to see it if you have somewhere nearby that is sufficiently dark or do a long exposure if in town. Point your camera ESE and see if you can get it. :-)
I live in downtown Vancouver and the light pollution is high, especially in the East. The ocean is south west and so there is a break there and mountains in the North but then there are mountains. Haha.
Actually it is kind of blessing because whatever there is to pick out is really easy to find. I am told that soon we will have smacking view of Jupiter. I wish I could take shots of what we see through our local observatory for you.
Yep that's going to be difficult with all that light pollution. Shame.
The mountains would make a lovely foreground for the Milky Way.
That would be interesting. I'm going to try get some photos of Jupiter and it's moons too.
That would be a great shot indeed! Well done sir molometer, that's an interesting hobby.
I find the whole thing fascinating and great fun. Glad you liked it. :-)