UKC

I finally got to see the Galactic Core of the Milky Way for the first time ever last night, and I'm even more happy as I managed to get a passible image from my Micro Four Thirds camera and its annoying noisy sensor.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/52326161139/in/dateposted/

That is awesome!

Cracker!

Lovely shot 

Can I ask a question - (lovely photo btw) - when you were taking this photo could you "see" what the photo is showing with your eyes, or is the milky way much fainter? 

I've been in plenty of very dark places on clear nights in my life, but I've never seen it like these beautiful photos show, so I've always assumed you need a camera's long exposure and the human eye can't see it that way? 

I've sometimes seen a faint misty white haze on dark nights but I've always second guessed myself that maybe it's a bit of cloud or something.

The 'trick' is to make sure your eyes are properly dark adjusted and that takes a good hour of being in the dark with no light. Takes patience. 

Good effort, but you need to get the colours more accurate. The sky (if it's properly dark) should be slightly greenish (skyglow) and the MW should be various shades of yellow/pink/white (warmer at the bottom).

Really? Doesn't a dark sky basically "look" black to the eye? And the stars just points of white light, maybe some reddish? One of my pet hates is night photos with stars in a blue sky. And don't get me started on moonlight exposed to look bright as day.....

If you've never seen the milkiness, then I don't think you have ever been somewhere truly dark! You need very dry haze free air. Altitude helps a lot. The best I have seen were at 5000m in Peru and in the Namib desert - astonishing compared with anything in this country. The Incas' "constellations" were the darker patches within the milkiness.

But yes, many photos are totally unrealistic. Probably including the OP's given it was clearly not all that dark (light pollution very visible).

I remember being struck by how black the sky was in the Sahara. It feels normal to think of seeing the clear night sky in the Highlands as black but then you go somewhere else...

Last night was the best I've ever seen of the Milky Way. Most of us know and have been around Derwent Water at night. This was the darkest I have experienced with the clearest/cleanest air quality. The local hotel in the image played nicely and did not have its lights lit to retina burning mode.

At the time I could see an obvious ribbon of stars going from horizon to horizon. It's faint but you can't miss it.

The image is more detailed than what I saw however I just increased contrast, added a little bit of clarity and saturation before using a wide brush to "dodge" along the Milky Way to give more contrast.

Other than a 13 second exposure I did nothing else apart from nuke all the dirty noisy pixels and wipe 12 satellites from existence.

When I started climbing in the early 90s I was lucky to spot one or two of them all night long. Now they are everywhere all the time and you can see at least one every time you look up.

Yes, I bivied last night on top of Ladhar Bheinn in Knoydart. Very clear air, moonless, so probably about as good as it gets in the UK. The milky way was superb  but still not a patch on the Namib though.

There's a reason they put all those telescopes at high altitude in the Atacama desert.

Perhaps surprisingly, Knoydard isn't *that* good for dark skies - there's quite a lot of pollution from Fort William and Mallaig. The best skies in The UK (clouds permitting) are in the Outer Hebrides (e.g., Mangersta or around the Sound of Harris). St Kilda is probably decent .

That's more to do with the human eye being rubbish at seeing colour in low light, so everything looks black-grey-white. There's lots of colours there, just sometimes not what you expect (e.g., dark sky glows green due to O2 recombination.) Another sanity check is to look at the 'HII' regions (e.g., the North American Nebula will be at the top of Lemming photo). That should be deep red, or given the limitation of the camera/display, probably pinkish. In this picture it's blue-grey.

I was knackered last night when I got home and quickly edited this snap. I'd appreciate any advice on how best to edit my images taken last night.

I did a mixture of seven or eight images with roughly the same amount of dark frames and all taken with NR off.

I then took a selection of individual shots where I had NR turned on to help reduce noise.

Everything was shot on a manual lens 7.5mm at f2.0. I duct taped the focus, set the ISO to 3200 and kept exposure to 13 seconds throughout the entire session. I shot in RAW even though I set it to Sunny, however for this edit I went down to 4200 (ish) kelvin in Lightroom.

EDIT

And for the image above, it was shot with NR turned off however I used Topaz denoise and Topas Sharpen to titillate it.

Funny that you wrote that, as by far the most impressive night sky I've ever seen was high in the Peruvian Andes towards the border with Chile. We got off a bus from Arequipa at night in a little village with no street lights. I'll never forget the night sky we saw as soon as we stepped off the bus. Truely awe inspiring. Even without letting eyes adjust it was incredible.

Another attempt at a single edit. I've come to the conclusion that this camera just can't cut it in the world of astrophotography. I'm happy with the shot but there are way too many hot pixels to even think about wanting to print this. 😯

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/52327094649/in/photostream/

nice. must have been with your Laowa 7.5mm f2?

there's an upgraded version with electronic contacts or the panasonic 12mm f.1.4/ 9mm/f1.7 that may be better for your needs and ill take it off your hands

did you use that noise software you mentioned on other thread?

a good way of comparing with naked eye is identifiying faintest visible stars..

Yes, That's much more accurate colour-wise. Probably as good as you're gonna get given the camera and location. One thing I sometimes resort to when getting the colours right is to pick a range of stars from blue giants (e.g., Rigel) through yellow to red giant (e.g., Betelgeuse) and make sure that they're all about right relative to their B-V index. It's a lot of faff and I only do it if I've used a light pollution filter which tends to skew colours if left to its own devices.

Anyway, good effort. I'm off to the dark skies of the Galloway hills in a couple of weeks and keeping my fingers crossed for even one clear night!

Aside from the Hebrides which are a bit of a drive, the other good dark sky location nearby should be (I've not got round to going there yet) is the very tip of the Llyn peninsular in North Wales.

Sure was. I can highly recomend it for sharpness.

Got one, and its quite possibly the sharpest lens I have. 😀

I sure did use some Topaz DeNoise on the RAW images. However I have some images that I'm going to stack with dark frames and see if there is any improvement in reducing noise. However I'm fighting a losing battle with the sensor of my Panasonic.

However this shot was taken hand held with my phone.

Straight out of camera and put through Topaz. Nothing else.

Fair point. Definitely better than a scrap of countryside squashed between the conurbations of Sheffield and Manchester though. The Peaks or something?😉

Ok. But do we want a photo to reflect as best as possible what the human eye/brain perceives or what the camera can "see".......?

Probably horses for courses.

If it was the case of faithfully representing what was presented before us then a lot of glossy magazines and coffee table books could be thrown into the bin.

Yes, and some probably should be. Each to their own, but I like a photo to make a decent attempt at reflecting what is actually seen.

Well, that's a different question and probably best discussed in a pub! What is truth? With astrophotography you really have to accept (well you don't, it's your choice) that it tries to show 'what is' rather than 'what you could see' - i.e., to transcend the limitations of our pretty limited and flawed eyes. But without 'inventing' stuff that has no basis in reality. Hubble false colour images? Webb sees in infrared, not visible light - is that OK? As for out little Canon/Panasonic cameras, it could be argued that *with care* they are no more fictitious (with respect to what we see with the naked eye) than using a telescope or for that matter me wearing my spectacles. The 'with care' bit of course is quite critical!

Yes, potential for endless duscussion....

I would basically make a distinction between a "landscape" photo and a photo for a sort of "scientific" interest or arsthetic. Obviously the Webb images (maybe a better word than photo) are mind-blowing in their beauty as well as scientific significance.

Anyway, some nice authentic light up north right now (though crappy phone camera doesn't do it justice!).

I think your picture is good and you are being overly critical by pixel peeping.

I disagree with your statement that your camera is "too noisy" and "isn't good enough for astro", you just need a different approach.

The best way to reduce noise is by increasing the exposure time or stacking images if movement in the scene prevents long exposures. This will cause challenges if you want both the stars to be sharp and the foreground to be sharp as they are moving relative to each other. Those challenges are lower for wide angle shots like you have here.

Stacking just 4 frames will half the noise level. Stacking 16 will reduce it by a factor of 4. That's a lot easier than buying some new fancy camera with only marginally lower noise. Lowering the noise level allows you push the histogram harder to bring out the detail.

There are no short cuts for astro images of faint objects; you need more time with the shutter open. As a minor comment, I think you may have set the ISO unnecessarily high and in doing so are reducing the dynamic range of each capture. ISO 800 might be better on your GH6 camera, but no lower. Yes, the image will look dark; that's normal. Just stretch it in your photo software afterwards and move the black point. The resulting image probably won't be any less noisy but will have 2 more stops of dynamic range which might equate to more colourful stars which tend to saturate the sensor.

Here is an example I made of the Milky Way with a 10 year old DSLR camera: 10x 2 minute exposures. 24mm F5.6 at ISO 800 (which in hindsight was too high for my camera). The image was taken from my back garden which has some light pollution which is why the bottom right of the image looks a bit weird. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/77393937@N02/48658330146

Your camera may have lower noise than my old camera and your lens is several stops faster. The difference is my total exposure time is 20 minutes vs your 13 seconds. You can barely even see the milky way in a single one of my 2 minute exposures, such is the light pollution - it needs the histogram pushing to bring it out. The long exposure time allows that. 

All the processing was done with the (free) deep sky stacker program which has been mentioned before. 

It was very visible from the top of Windy Gyle in the Cheviots on Saturday night.

Phone camera doesn't do your picture any justice mind, it's epic!

Here's my attempt at stacking, to reduce noise.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/52327684658/in/dateposted/

EDIT

I did attach the image direct, using the upload feature but it some how made the image look too harsh compared to adding a link from flickr.

Lemming's noise isn't random - it's a fixed pattern noise. You can't stack your way out of that! The only thing to do is to use dark frames, but I know that it's so bad in the Panasonic sensor (I've tested the similar G9) that it's really not worth the effort. It's just not the right tool for the job. Also stacking ultrawide angle untracked images is much harder than usual: Most (all?) stackers align frames with shift and rotation, but ultrawide images aren't orthogonal, so the alignment doesn't work. You have to (a) correct any distortion in the lens first (there will be plenty in this sort of lens) and then remap the images to a stereographic projection. *Then* you can stack them and remap the result back to rectilinear. I've done it a few times (14mm on a FF Canon 6d) and it's a drag (although a lot easier the second time when you have all the distortion parameters dialled in). Of course having a tracker avoids a lot of these problems, but that's another different ballgame. And you still don't want to be using the Panasonic sensor (given a choice).

You could do all that, or cheat like me and use Sequator to do the hard work aligning stars and keeping the ground still. 😀

I only managed to spot one errant red pixel.

The retro-burners off a Tralfamadorian scout craft probably.

Real nice photo btw Lemming!

Ooh, I'll have to try that! Cheers!

Reading that makes me realise I’ll never be a real photographer.

You're not alone, I did not understand half of that myself. 🤪

I enjoy Astro photography however my one and only camera is a Jack of All trades but mostly leaning towards video rather than photos. It takes great images in normal conditions however taking images at night and the camera is way out of its depth.

As for what or who is a real photographer, I’d say I am one. I have a tool to take photos and I enjoy the process of taking photos. I think that just about sums up what a real photographer is.

I’m nowhere in the same league as many of the professional photographers on this site but even so I’d still class myself as a real photographer even if I only had a phone to take images.

It’s more a mindset rather than the price of the toys used to take photos.

Yeh, sorry about that. Although I would say that most of what I wrote is largely 'engineering' and not really about 'photography'. Arguably a 'real' photographer doesn't worry too much about engineering.

No apology needed. I was merely recognising the limits of my experience and interest. But thanks for the reply.

Good shot.

I'm using similar kit as you but G9 and find it a pretty good compromise for most stuff over my previous Nikon APS-C dSLR, i have just added the 100-400 and its a stunning bit of kit for the price and size, i have the 12-60 Pana Leica for it too, looking at adding the 15, 25 and 42.5 primes to the kit at some point

I got tempted by the FF S5 deals a while back as its a pretty small body for FF but the lenses are crazy money and bloody huge so i'm more than happy with my M4/3 setup, as are many others.

I love your picture  looks……..real  (with a nod to the poster who I would very much like to share a pint with about what we perceive as real)

Buttermere is a great place for a relatively dark sky, I’ve seen the Milky Way from a cottage just outside the village and also from the summit of Fleetwith Pike  

In my neck of the woods though you can’t get better than Kielder, though a wild camp on the summit of The Schill in the cheviots took some beating. Almost as dark though I like the faint glow of real life in shots which from there you have Bamburgh Castle, farne islands etc. still very dark though  

For people looking for dark sky sites, I'd recommend: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=6.51&lat=53.9249&lon=-3.94...

Just as a word of explanation...

The VIIRS datasets are based on a satellite looking down and measure the light coming up from the ground. It gives you an idea of where is far from artificial light sources. However, the 'World Atlas 2015' is actually more useful since it attempts to account for the back-scatter and gives you an idea of how much artificial light you'll see looking straight up from the ground.

Click on a location and you'll get some stats - Bortle Class 2 is a proper dark site, Class 1 even better.

I have the Panasonic Leica 12mm Prime lens which I bought second-hand from MPB.com and it cost me a small fortune. However its fully weather sealed, made of metal and I think its worth every penny.

I didn't know that Panasonic did a 15mm lens and the only reason I chose the 12mm was because my 12-35mm zoom lens went that low and I liked the field of view it produced. Even though this lens can go down to f1.4 for my first "test shot" I sent the aperture ring in the opposite direction all the way to f16 for this image.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/51581736376/in/dateposted/

I also have a Panasonic 25mm Prime lens. There are two versions. The f1.4 version costs roughly £550 depending where you shop, while the f1.7 version costs roughly £150.

I "ummed" and "ahhed" watching a lot of YouTube reviews about which of the two lenses to buy and finally settled on getting the cheaper lens as all the reviews said, apart from build quality, there was very little difference in the image quality for a £400 price difference.

I can happily say that the relatively cheaper Panasonic 25mm lens for £150 produces outstanding images and I have never once regretted going for the cheaper lens.

I don't know which dark sky places you might have experienced. However, I have been in several southern hemisphere dark sky places in good conditions, and what you can see with the naked eye is truly astonishing to anybody who is used to 'normal' European skies. Not 'just' the Milky Way, but also fine structure within it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15dG9TsE2gRU9uwTsH0xjFcUHUJNjhF05/view?usp=...

Sorry, can’t open link.

i didn't know about that one either (olympus user). but it would have to be significantly better than the classic 20/1.7 pancake to justify its bulk. do you have that one?

ps my oly em-10 mk 3 body has arrived- so looking forward to trying out the new features like live composite view. and hope to get the budget 7.5mm/2.8 7artisans for astro and general fun (never been that wide before)

That's quite impressive.

What would it look like if the bridge was more silhouetted?

Here are my first serious attempts to photograph the milky way. Taken in the Namib desert. The first one is three stitched single exposures horizon to horizon. The second was a single exposure taken the same night after the moon came up. The bright object is Jupiter. Although I am sure they are both technically veyr flawed, I feel they are pretty "authentic". Fuji XT2 with the XF 10-24 zoom at 10mm on longest exposure to avoid star movement. Processed by just fiddling around with the exposure and contrast sliders until they looked right.

very impressive- i guess that's the FF sensor advantage- although it does seem a bit noisy (or is that the milky way?). and there appears to be circle of sky without stars?

Going off at a tangent.

Recently bought Photopills and am very impressed. However am I right in saying the galactic core is only visible nearer the equator? Every date I can see in Scotland shows the MW visible but not the core?

Wana swap cameras?

They look fantastic.

Its declination is -29 degrees. So it's always below the horizon from latitudes higher than 61 degrees north.

Thanks. I’ll clearly need to become more learned on the subject, but that’s what I suspected.

You can use the Stellarium software to see what is visible from different locations and at different times. It's a super program.

It also has the option to overlay a camera / telescope field of view onto the image so help with planning. 

It shows the milky way as an image so you can see the structure within it. As has already been pointed out, the core isn't really visible from the UK but there are many other bright and colourful regions which are visible.

I would second the recommendation for Stellarium. To return to the 'colour' question - Stellarium also gives you the B-V index for each star which you can roughly translate into colour using: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_index

The other atlas I find useful is: http://www.sky-map.org/v2

It based on various photographic surveys and goes far deeper than Stellarium.

One other hint I can offer...

If you are OK with 'artistic' astro images (whatever that means) look up and try 'Fujii effect/filter'. Normal astro photo (particularly wide field) are poor at showing (a) constellation and generally relative star brightnesses and (b) star colour. Largely because star are point sources (assuming you have decent optics) so all stars are much the same size and colour gets lost. The Fijii effect creates a slight halo around bright stars (of the star colour). Used judiciously it can look quite good.

Thanks. I’m really enjoying playing about with Photopills and hope to use it on an upcoming trip to plan a few photos.

Always been interested in the night sky so I’ll check out Stellarium.

Weather turned out decent, so here's something a bit different...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8HzdENDkEnuYVTRh9

The original is much bigger (10k x 10k) and deeper (16b) than this, but this jpeg give an idea. Oddly, the this Otter Pool spot which should have been a reasonable dark sky wasn't as good as the beach on the Solway Firth. I think There was a lot of moisture in the air that night (Scotland, yeh).

The wall of that well need gardening.

A more 'normal' view (from the same data)...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xmJwv183nS1fRdqT9

Now if I could achieve that with my MFT camera, I’d be happy.

That is a fantastic image

I've tidied them up a bit and added an annotated version of the full-sky image. Google photos has of course sucked some of the detail out my 300Mpx original, so you'll have to trust me that Bode's and the Cigar galaxies are actual identifiable. Still, it's got all the planets bar Mercury and Venus (obviously), an asteroid (Vesta) and four extragalactic objects all in one image. Haven't figured out how to print it yet...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZLeiG2xEGW8c8Qg39

Alyn Wallace is worth a follow if you aren't aware of him.

This is a good primer on processing Milky Way images.

youtube.com/watch?v=PaqPueBtYAo&

His first book, Photographing The Night Sky, is the bible of technique, planning and processing night sky imges.

M

Keilder is a good dark sky option 

https://kielderobservatory.org/the-observatory/dark-skies

o

I've got a copy.

Just wish I was quick enough to get the hard back version.

Thanks Lemming.

Thanks Marky.