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Summer sky with macro lens

Added: August 06, 2016

Tags: photos
I did not expect to write this post at all. But after writing 6 other today...well, I can write anything :-)

These are results of my astro photography experiments I have done last summer. I have used Tamron 90mm/f2.8 that is not ideal lens for astro photography without rotating with sky during exposure. So I was limited to 2 seconds exposure and I decided to crank up ISO to 12800.

Why such a stupid set-up? Well, I wanted to take photo of M31 Andromeda Galaxy and NGC 7000 North America Nebula.

I took each photo 60 times, hoping it will be enough to cope with insane ISO. Plus a few dark frames.

Then I returned home (to Bratislava) and problems started. First of all, I could pay more attention to focusing and making sure it does not defocus. I lost a few captures this way.

Then what to do with so many megabytes? My machine really struggled to process them. It took me nearly 1 year (mostly not doing anything, but "periodically" returning to this challenge) until I got these results and making a vow "That's it, I am not going to touch them any more".

I have converted them to BW, because especially NGC 7000 shot manifested a lot of color noise and surprise-suprise, NGC 7000 was not reddish :-(

M31 in top part of photo
M31 crop from previous photo

100% crop of previous photo. No, those are not individual stars in M31, but noise.
M31 crop from previous photo

Do I just imagine North America Nebula, or is it really there?
NGC 7000

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