Deeper look at the center of our galaxy

This is my first experience in deep sky photography. Best place to start is center of our galaxy - where deep sky objects are densely packed.

128 shots @3.2 seconds exposure each. Sony NEX-5 with Canon FD 55mm F1.2@2.2. All frames were stacked using DeepSkyStacker, plate solving and annotation is done by All Sky Plate Solver. There were 2 shooting sessions for this subject - both at Tenerife mountains, at heights 1500 and 2200 meters. Sky glow was twice brighter at 1500m, so this batch of 106 shots was not used in final stacking. Even at 2200m conditions were far from perfect - wind from Africa carried visible dust which contributed to background brightness.

Next time camera with more modern sensor will help as well as less-bright (!!) lens: F1.2 was making bright stars too large even when stopped down to F2.2. And surely, sky tracking mount will allow much longer exposures and higher image SNR.

On mouse over - annotation. Higher resolution on click.

September 3, 2017

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