Light Pollution limits what you can do in the city, but it's worth having a go.
It's been clear most nights in Melbourne recently, time to do just that.
The first pic "M42 Nebular" in "Orion" is a "stack" of just 4 shots.
I had no real plan, so the exposure time for each shot varies from 8 sec to 20 sec, my stacking technique ignores exposure time, so no problem there.
I used my recently modified and untested (I made it smaller) "Sector Drive" mount, which I can now say works quite well.
Taken with a fuji XT1 at 3200asa through a Pentax M 135mm f3.5 lens at f4.
Looking at the bright star toward the top of the picture tells us this lens is "stopped down" and has an 8 blade iris.
I've been out most nights trying different targets and different lenses, the following images are the result.
 |
| Orion Nebula M42 Fuji XT1 Pentax 135mm f3.5 at f4, Cropped |
 |
| Takumar 200mm f5.6 6400asa 8 sec single image. M42 going down over next doors nectarine tree. Clouds began rolling in, time to come inside. |
 |
| "Eta Carinae Nebula"and the"Southern Pleiades" Pentax M 135mm 10sec 10 stack f4 Fuji XT1. |
I've just received and repaired a Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 M42 lens.
This is a great lens and I intend to do a detailed review soon. For the moment, here is a quickly put together Astro picture from last night.
 |
| ETA Carinae Nebula Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm at f4.8 6400asa 10sec stack of 9 Fuji XT1.Cropped 8th March 2017 10:00pm |
As you can see below, a longer lens (Tak 200mm) and a tighter crop really does help.
All my images are "stacked" on a Mac and post processed on the Mac using "Gimp" or "Rawtherapee" both free and available for Mac.
The aligning and stacking is done using some "command line" tools included with the application "Hugin" Panorama Creator.
 |
| "Eta Carinae" 200mm Takumar at f5.6 6400 asa 8 sec exposure stack of 11images, Cropped. Fuji Xt1 |
 |
| "ETA Carina Nebular" 300mm Takumar @f4.8 6400asa 15sec. stack of 11 shots Cropped. Post processed in "RawTherappee" Sat 15th April 2017 10:23pm |
 |
| "Omega Centauri" NGC 5139 .Takumar 200mm f5.6 3sec 12800asa stack of 5 images, cropped. This Globular Cluster consists of about 10,000,000 stars. I's quite hard to find from our back yard, but perseverance paid off. |
 |
| "Jewel Box" Star Cluster. This is very close to the Southern Cross and not too hard to find. Takumar 200mm f 5.6 lens. 6.5sec, 6400 asa. Stack of 5 images, heavily cropped. Fuji XT1 |
 |
| This Is a wide angle view South from our back yard. Clearly light pollution is a big problem anywhere low in the sky. I was looking for the "Large Magallenic Cloud" and as luck would have it I found it. It's the light area next to the tree, amongst the orange glow of light pollution. I'm pretty happy I found it. Fujinon XF18mm f2.0. 4 secs 2500asa |
 |
| Following on from the previous image. I pointed a 50mm lens at it, and with a lot of post processing managed to dig it out of the murk, a bit. "Large Magallenic Cloud" 160,000 light years away |
 |
| This image was captured the following night. Here I used my "CZJ" 135mm lens at f5.6. 6400asa 8 secs. This image may be as good as it gets from the Back Yard. This was taken about an hour earlier than the previous ones, so it was a little higher in the sky. "Large Magallenic Cloud" |
