I recently bought a Nikon D80 w/ a 28-80mm Sigma lens and a 70-300mm Nikon lens. I am in West Texas for a couple days and would like to take some pictures of the night sky and the milky way. I tried last night using the night portrait setting with a low shutter speed and a tripod, but nothing came out. The sky itself last night wasn't clear - it seemed pretty hazy - so I'm not sure if it was that or my lack of experience that caused problems. Does anyone have any tips? Thanks...

How long was your exposure?
night sky photos take long exposures from about ~30 seconds on up to hours show stars, milkyway, and etc.

Go for at least 30 seconds to see what you get, set your apeture to F4 or F2.8 whatever low number you can get to with your setup, set the lens to focus at Inifinity, and set your ISO setting to 400 or 800 or higher if you can get it. Open the shutter for at least 30 seconds...you should see something

You will want to get on a tracking mount too for longer exposures, anything longer than about 30 seconds will give you star trails unless you track.

Try again and good luck!

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John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
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I am also going to try that! Thanks.

Here's a 30 second long, tripod-mounted shot of the southern summer sky that I took with a Canon Digital Rebel DSLR at Cherry Springs State Park two years ago.

Dave Mitsky

Attached Images

Scorpius & Sagittarius CSSP 5-9-05.jpg (10.0 KB, 32 views)

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Here's a five minute exposure of the same area (tilted so that the Milky Way runs horizontally) using a wide-angle lens with the camera on an equatorial mount. The dark Pipe Nebula and the Prancing or Cosmic Dark Horse, of which the Pipe Nebula is a part, appear at the lower right.

Dave Mitsky

Attached Images

Southern Milky Way CSSP 5-9-05.jpg (12.2 KB, 33 views)

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Well, I'm headed to Cherry Springs for the Black Forest Star Party in a month, so this just makes me more excited about the skies there!

(I normally observe in and around Baltimore/Washington area, where Milky Way is just a candy bar)

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

nice photos!!!!! i love the second one