Tonight, as I do occasionally, I am going to give you two photos. The first is of hte Constellation Orion. There’s nothing particularly special about, taken on my iphone, you can see the four stars at the corner of the body, the line of three diagonally across the frame that is his belt and the vertical grouping just below the belt, that are his sword.
This was taken whilst out one evening, as I say, nothing special, now look at this one:
This was taken with my Nikon D5300 (it’s a 12 year old entry level DSLR – nothing special, I just alway wanted to own a Nikon, I bought it new, Tonight, I did something with it I have never done before. I pointed the camera at the sky, on a tripod, and using a cabled remote control, took a 25 second exposure of Orion. A few things are noticeable; The star trails, even with only 25 seconds, that is more than enough to highlight the motion of the stars.
Even with the trails, you can make out Orion – after a fashion, the distinctive orange trail is Betelgeuse, that’d be correct becasue Betelgeuse is a red giant, so that m akes sense (I have to publish again – near midnight), The bright line above and to the right, also makes sense, that is Rigel, it’s a blue supergiant, very hot.
Below the two shoulder stars is a line astern of three bright stars – these are the stars of the belt. Below it are the stars of the sword, including the nebula of Orion.
Yesterday evening, I also took a sequence of about 20 five secod exposures, and I am going to have a go stacking them to see what comes out. I’m not expecting a lot, as I am a bit dubious about the focussing, I’m not coninced I had it right. I do have an aleternat lens I can u
se. I’ll wait to see what hte stacking results of this are like, and then I’ll have another go.
I went to the Hampshire Astonommy Group monthly lecture tonight. It was about the history of the club. Very interesting.
