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.
Scorpius in the pre-dawn sky, March 15, 2013, from the Painted Pony Resort, New Mexico. This is a stack of 5 x 3 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 35mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600, with the ground from one image, plus a stack of 2 exposures through the Kenko Softon filter for the star glows.
