The Stars at Night...

...are big and bright in New Madison, Ohio.

Since I got my new digital camera, one thing that I had been itching to try is a bit of astrophotography. Nothing special, just pictures of the stars. I had seen numerous images of the stars flowing in circular arcs and thought those were just way cool and wanted to do it quite badly.

However, in my former life of having film cameras there was too much expense involved in purchasing decent film, taking the experimental pictures, developing to see if the images were worth anything, then doing it all over again. With a digital SLR, I get instant gratification. I can see instantly how sucky the picture is and deviate the camera settings from there.

I had taken long exposure pictures a number of times before, all while getting eaten by mosquitoes, to no avail. I would get maybe one bright star, or the entire picture would turn out as bright as daytime even though it was taken at midnight!

I perused a number of websites of people much more skilled in taking pictures than I and noted what kind of settings worked for them and plied them to my experimentation. Armed with this info, I decided that trying to take a decent night-sky picture in the city was futile and took the show on the road to the country. I had to take a repaired computer to my friend "B" who lives in the middle of nowhere, just outside the small town of New Madison, Ohio, not far from Richmond, Indiana.

It was dark.

Fig. 1: Treeline with Venus & Milky Way.
Sony alpha 200, Minolta fixed 28mm, f2.8 at 30 sec., ISO 800, full manual.

This was my first exposure! Yay!

Fig. 2: Venus & Milky Way No. 2 (Higher Sensitivity)
Sony alpha 200, Minolta fixed 28mm, f2.8 at 30 sec., ISO1600, full manual.

Fig. 3: Venus & Milky Way No. 2 ('Normal' Sensitivity)
Sony alpha 200, Minolta fixed 28mm, f2.8 at 30 sec., ISO800, full manual.

Figures 2 and 3 are the same sky location, just a different setting for the "film speed". This is essentially how sensitive the "film", or in this case the imaging sensor, is to light. This sensitivity allows the camera to pick up all the light coming in from the fainter objects, but as you can see the higher sensitivity causes a loss of contrast.

You can click the pictures for larger versions at 1280x857. If you would like (yeah, right!) the full 10 megapixel image, let me know and I will send them to you.

Fig. 4: Looking straight up.
Sony alpha 200, Minolta fixed 28mm, f2.8 at 30 sec., ISO 1600, full manual.

Fig. 5: The Big Dipper
Sony alpha 200, Minolta fixed 28mm, f2.8 at 30 sec., ISO 800, full manual.

I am definitely going to go back out and experiment some more. I like this instant gratification thing.