Milky Way Arch over Newgale Beach, Pembrokeshire

[Chris P.]

Hi everyone - I've been busy so not had time for deep sky stuff but I was fortunate enought to get this while on holiday in Wales. 7 individual frames (all 30 sec exposures at ISO1600 and f3.2 with my 17-35mm lens and modded Canon 5D MkII) stitched together in Lightroom. Really pleased to get all the way from the core to the double cluster and include Andromeda. Hope you like it

[+Glafnazur]

Lovely image Chris 👍

[+Graham]

That is very pretty Chris.

[+Derbyshire Dave]

You should be pleased Chris. Great job

[+Derbyshire Dave]

Love the result. Talk me through this Chris. Seven frames moving the camera  by 15 degrees or so sideways?

[Chris P.]

Just now, Derbyshire Dave said:

Love the result. Talk me through this Chris. Seven frames moving the camera  by 15 degrees or so sideways?

Yep - camera was in portrait orientation. Level the tripod. Shoot then move the camera. Using a wide angle lens can give a barrelling effect which can affect stitching the images later but this one was OK because I had plenty of overlap (like a deep sky mosaic) for Lightroom to detect and align the frames

[Chris P.]

6 minutes ago, Derbyshire Dave said:

Love the result. Talk me through this Chris. Seven frames moving the camera  by 15 degrees or so sideways?

should have said, the camera just rotates on the ball-head of the tripod, not moving the whole tripod for each shot

[+Derbyshire Dave]

On 25/06/2022 at 17:50, Chris P. said:

should have said, the camera just rotates on the ball-head of the tripod, not moving the whole tripod for each shot

Keep looking back at this image Chris, love it. Can I ask you one last question which I have never managed to get clear in my mind.

 

When you point a wide angle skywards, you get serious distortion. The wider, the more distortion. So to get no distortion, the camera would have to be kept reasonablly level. Looking at that in my Sky Safari simulation, keeping it level would not allow me to get "high enough" to reach the Milky Way.

So is it a bit of a compromise.. point it maybe 15 degrees skywards, and let the stitching sort out the distortion? Or do you need to keep it dead level.

 

Thanks

[Chris P.]

31 minutes ago, Derbyshire Dave said:

Keep looking back at this image Chris, love it. Can I ask you one last question which I have never managed to get clear in my mind.

 

When you point a wide angle skywards, you get serious distortion. The wider, the more distortion. So to get no distortion, the camera would have to be kept reasonablly level. Looking at that in my Sky Safari simulation, keeping it level would not allow me to get "high enough" to reach the Milky Way.

So is it a bit of a compromise.. point it maybe 15 degrees skywards, and let the stitching sort out the distortion? Or do you need to keep it dead level.

 

Thanks

level as possible for the tripod and use the boundary warp control when you stitch the images. This helps correct the distortion. Also, before stitching I make sure the individual frames have been adjusted for lens abberation and profile correction in Adobe Lightroom

[+Derbyshire Dave]

That's really helpful Chris. Thank you.

 

I'll be needing some clear skies then..

[Chris P.]

2 minutes ago, Derbyshire Dave said:

That's really helpful Chris. Thank you.

 

I'll be needing some clear skies then..

as always Dave - darker the better

[8472]

Impressive, Chris!