Photos from my fine new camera and my fine old camera
No wolves last night but I caught the ISS twice just after sunset. First near Cassiopeia then near the big dipper. The space station shows up as a streak because these are long exposures. The Cassiopeia one shows more sky colour because it was nearer the setting sun.
These are both extracted from timelapse/night-sky videos taken by the camera’s scene mode which means they are 25 second exposures at ISO 100 – I’m guessing f2.8 but not completely sure.
I remember clearly as a kid seeing the little dipper pouring into the big dipper in the night sky. Now the little dipper is just lost in the light pollution. Even in my chosen, out-of-town spot, with a long exposure it’s hard to pick out. The first image below shows pretty much what I can see – Ursa Major is clear but Ursa Minor is MIA. The second one has been brightened considerably so you can start to see the stars of the smaller dipper. In the third one i went through and painfully picked out all the classic “dipper” stars in green.
I find it interesting that, at maximum exposure, the P900 is just a bit better than my 70 year old mark I eyeball. This is ISO 1600, 1 sec, f2.8 and I brightened it as much as i could on the PC. I had tried ISO 6400 1/2 sec with no better result. I guess I imagined there were countless other stars that my eye couldn’t see. The limits of the camera seem to be about the same as my eye – around magnitude 3. The second star from the left is Mizar and you can just see its fainter companion Alcor which, to be fair, my eye cannot.
I also took a series of snaps and combined them with rot’n’stack but no great joy. If the skies are clear again tonight I’ll try a star-trails timelapse.
Astrophotography Newbie 