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[starbux]

Yes, I have yet another camera after owning the Nikon 5000 for only a few months. I needed an additional camera for mainly non-astro use. I of course wanted to see what I could do with the camera on celestial targets. The first two Orion shots were taken in RAW mode. Initially in B&W with a built-in red filter (there is also yellow, orange, green, and blue) but in RAW you can convert to color easily. In monochrome, I found green to give better sky contrast than red, but in color I got the best white balance by sampling the dark sky in the image. Well, anyhow here is Orion:


This was at full 55mm zoom, f/10 800iso 82sec exposure


Crop of the above showing belt and sword

I also got a 2" Orion Skyglow filter which I put at the front of the camera with a 58mm-to-48mm step-down adapter ring. Clouds and dew did not help, and next time I try this I won't use full field (18mm focal length) because of the vignetting.


1600 iso, f/3.5, 30 second exposure (not from RAW).

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Those are some great rich field shots you shared with us.

No trailing and sharp images - good tracking!

I do notice some noise in the frames, but again it's at ISO 800. Have you exposed any at a lower ISO?

I am not a great fan of anti-pollution filters, as the trade off in increased constrast to greenish hue kinda puts me off.

You mention a new camera, but you don't say what you got.

But they nice shots...

[starbux]

The new camera (almost new) is the Canon Digital Rebel XT (EOS 350D). I bought it from KEH.com with a partial trade-in from some analog cameras I inherited. This was the same dealer I got the Nikon 5000 from.

The second image has the feel of viewing Orion in binos. faintest stars are about 8th to 9th mag.

But I'm not giving up on the Skyglow filter. That was a bad night. It seems to do a better job with the nebula colors, though. If I used a lower iso with a correspondingly longer exposure there might be better results. I am also considering getting an h-alpha filter for b&w imaging. This would bring out faint nebulae even in city skies, but would probably require long exposures in 30min range or so.

This is too heavy to mount to any of my current telescopes, which is why I got the Nikon. But I could eventually get a telephoto zoom lens to image with directly. Ultimately I would want to get an IS lens (that would be for daytime mostly) but for astronomy IS is not necessary.