Hello,

I am totally new to astrophotography and would appreciate any advice to help me out.

I bought myself a tripod today to go with the Canon G6 I already own.

I know that you can buy better cameras for this type of photography. However, I just want to use existing equipment first to see if I have staying power.

I took the original image below tonight in South Wales at around 8pm and I have no idea what constellation it belongs to as I just had a small patch which was cloud free and I just took pictures at various settings to gauge my equipment.

This is the info from the raw image below: File Name
CRW_2646_1.CRW
Camera Model Name
Canon PowerShot G6, Shooting Date/Time 04/02/2008 20:07:20
Shooting Mode Manual
Photo Effect Off
Tv (Shutter Speed 10
Av (Aperture Value) 2.0
Light Metering Center Weighted Avg.
ISO Speed 400
Lens 7.2 - 28.8mm
Focal Length 7.2mm
Digital Zoom None
Image Size 3072x2304
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
White Balanc Tungsten
AF Mode Single AF
File Size 7718KB
Drive Mode Single-frame shooting

I then resized the image and messed around with the colour, gamma, and brightness etc, see JPEG image below.

I would like to know if anyone would be so kind what constellation this belongs to and tips on the effects and colour changes.

Kind Regards,

Paul

Attached Images

	First attempt resize.jpg (102.9 KB, 25 views)
	First attempt raw resized.jpg (115.1 KB, 20 views)

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your first post. You have a fine shot of the head of Taurus the Bull including a faint image of The Hyades cluster, (In the middle of the lower 'triangle ' of bright stars). On the right edge of the picture you have captured the 5 brightest stars of the Pleiades cluster.

Astrophotography is a very long and very rewarding learning process. Probably the best thing you can do is begin to learn the night sky, some of the major constellations and bright stars, through the year. The most helpful piece of equipment I have ever owned for this is called a planisphere. It is a plastic or cardboard disk with date and hour markings on the edge which will give you the positions of the major stars and constellations for any time of the year. Contact and or join
a local astronomy club or association as these experienced people will be able to answer many of your questions. Set yourself a small goal each night, relax, be patient and enjoy.

With your camera, If the ISO is adjustable, I would increase it to its maximum setting for star pictures.The maximum shutter speed you will be able to use will be around 15s as beyond this, the rotation of the earth will make the stars track across the picture leaving a trail.

For the planets or the moon, lower shutter speeds are needed, 1/2 to 1/8 of a second for bright planets and 1/30 to 1/250 of a second for the moon depending on its brightness.

Kind Regards
Matt

Dear Matt,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply and with such a great post!

Could you tell me if I am reading my star chart right? According to the chart I have of Tauras the white bright star at the top of the triangle in my picture is Elnath 1.62, the lower white star Tau 3.62 and the blue star to the left of Elnath is Tau 2.96?. Thank you for pointing out M45 I thought that looked lovely myself.

When I took this picture last night I could not see any of the blue stars that came out in the picture, so another bonus of astrophotography.

If anyone has any tips on the actual processing of the images I would be very glad to listen.

As a side note I found myself at work today constantly checking if the clouds had cleared but sadly they did not, looks like patience is in order for this new hobby.

Kind Regards,

Paul