First light

[Clive]

It was exactly a year ago today that I processed my very first digital astrophotograph centred on Leo's sickle.  Taken a couple of days earlier using my new, just out of the box, Canon 200D with 50mm F1.8 lens mounted on a homemade tracking camera mount,  the image comprised just 9 lights all at different exposures, ISO settings and F numbers giving a total exposure of 5 minutes.  No darks, flats or bias frames and stacked and processed entirely using IRIS.  I was quite frankly amazed to see so many stars and was instantly hooked.

 

[Doc]

Nice photo especially for your first one. What part of the sky was this? I was wondering what the large but very dim arc was running through the centre of the photo.

[Clive]

Yes I'd noticed it (and hoped others didn't 😀). I would like to say thats it's a previously undiscovered filament running through Leo, but I can't.  I've just had a look at the individual images and as far as I can see, none of them show it. I suspect it's an artifact resulting from stacking images taken at different F numbers resulting in an overall vignetting effect that the gradient remover couldn't quite remove (no flats used so it had to cope with both the vignetting and a large non-linear sky gradient north to south). It only shows on stretched images.

[Doc]

Interesting Clive, doesn't distract from the photo though.