The area around the head of Scorpius, including the bright star Antares at lower left of centre and the dark lanes leading to the star Rho Ophiuchi. The area is filled with colourful nebulosity, including yellow and blue reflection nebulas and magenta emission nebulas. To the right of Antares is the globular cluster Messier 4. The field is similar to what binoculars would take in. I shot this the morning of May 4, 2014, from the Four Bar Cottages near the Arizona Sky Village, near Portal Arizona. This is a stack of 10 x 4 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 135mm lens and Canon 5D Mark II (filter modified) at ISO 1600. This overexposed the frames but gave enough signal to bring out the faint dark nebulas without introducing a lot of noise. Even so, I forgot to turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction so no dark frames were applied to these images. The camera was tracking, but not guiding, on the iOptron SkyTracker. Stacked with Median combine to eliminate satellite trails.
The area around the head of Scorpius, including the bright star Antares at lower left of centre and the dark lanes leading to the star Rho Ophiuchi. The area is filled with colourful nebulosity, including yellow and blue reflection nebulas and magenta emission nebulas. To the right of Antares is the globular cluster Messier 4. The field is similar to what binoculars would take in. I shot this the morning of May 5, 2014, from the Four Bar Cottages near the Arizona Sky Village, near Portal Arizona. This is a stack of 10 x 3 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 135mm lens and Canon 5D Mark II (filter modified) at ISO 1600. The camera was tracking, but not guiding, on the iOptron SkyTracker. Stacked with Median combine to eliminate satellite trails.
The Scutum Starcloud (at top) in the Milky Way, with the Milky Way also bright to the south in Serpens. The nebulas M16 and M17 are at the bottom of the field. The bright star cluster M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, is at the top on the northern edge of the Scutum Starcloud. The area is rife with dark nebulas and dust lanes. This is a stack of 6 x 3-minute exposures with the 85mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800 plus an additional exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A filter to add the star glows. Tracked on the Star Adventurer tracker which tracked very well through all the exposures.
