Star Search

I went out last night and tried my hand at astrophotography once again. This time, I took all my photos with the tripod on cement, and it seemed to work better than last time--only a few images were smeared. And I got some real stars this time! I compared several of my shots against Starry Night and saw very high correlation, right down to the colors of the brighter stars.


This is a shot of the Big Dipper just as it came out of the camera--no ex post facto contrast stretching this time. (Click on it--a lot was lost in Blogger's resizing.) It was taken at ISO 200. At ISO 400, the background was too bright to make out the fainter stars (and the image was even noisier too). I suspect I'd have to go to a rural area, far from Orem's light pollution devices streetlights, in order to shoot at ISO 400.

I think I'd also get better results if I used my camera's "Low sharpening" mode--maybe it wouldn't magnify the noise in the sky so badly that way.