Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Extremely wide field
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Summer Milky Way, Ben Hayes
Summer Milky Way
Powered byPixInsight

Summer Milky Way

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Summer Milky Way, Ben Hayes
Summer Milky Way
Powered byPixInsight

Summer Milky Way

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Taken on a beautifully clear and moonless night in August, 2023.  You can see several constellations, including part of Cepheus (the king) and all of Cygnus (the swan), Lyra (the harp), Lacerta (the lizard), Vulpecula (the little fox), and Sagitta (the arrow).  Below is a map generated by PixInsight's "AnnotateImage" script.  Vega is the bright blue-white star in the upper right in the constellation Lyra.

constellations.jpg

Image taken using a Canon 60Da and Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens on a SkyWatcher Star Adventure™ tracking mount  A QHY Polemaster™ helped with polar alignment.    To capture the sequence of images, I usually use an inexpensive intervalometer connected to the DSLR, but this time used the Stellarmate™ app on my iPhone which wirelessly communicates to a Raspberry PI3™ with StellarMate™ installed.  The PI3 box is mounted on the tripod and connected to the Canon 60D and StarAdventurer™ tracking mount via USB cables.   StellarMate™ has a very friendly user interface and comes with K-Stars planetarium software built in.   It is definitely not quite as intuitive and easy as ASIAir™ app, but it interfaces with all kinds of brands of cameras, focusers, mounts, etc.  I've come to enjoy using it.  

Canon 60D uses an 18 mega-pixel APS-C-sized CMOS sensor that is 22.3mm x 14.9mm and has a pixel size is 4.29 µm.  ISO was set to 400 to keep the noise at a minimum (it's a really old CMOS sensor) and Stellarmate™ was then used to collect 22 sub frames, each with an exposure of 180s.   It was a warm summer evening (16°C) and Stellarmate recorded the temperature of the Canon's APS-C sensor to be a whopping 24°C.  The bottom line is that calibration frames, especially darks and biases were in order.  Aperture for the 14mm Rokinon lens is fixed at f/2.8 and PixInsight™ computed an effective focal length of the Rokinon lens to be 15.85mm.    

Final image has a resolution of 55.81 arcsec/px and field of view of 66° 53' 55.6" x 44 50' 12.9”.  The center of the image is 20hr 39’ 1.6” (right ascension)  +46° 12’ 13.1’ (declination).

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    Summer Milky Way, Ben Hayes
    Original
  • Summer Milky Way, Ben Hayes
    C

C

Description: Same as original (Revision A), but includes the acquisition details at the bottom of the image.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Summer Milky Way, Ben Hayes

In these public groups

Cloudy Nights