Skyhunter's first trip to the desert
A hop, skip, and a move to the UAE later; I took the Starhunter out for it’s first trip to the desert. There is a spot a little over an hours drive away from Abu Dhabi known as “the Milky Way spot” - because when the conditions are right, you can make out the milkyway with the unaided eye. Never as stunning in real life as in pictures, but still a sight of awe and wonder for any human to behold!
I was a pretty clear evening, with little wind to pick up dust, and little light from the moon. I’d done a quick test in Abu Dhabi to make sure the tracker was basically working, but the light pollution makes it hard to check the tracking or GoTo functionality, so the first 20 mins was just playing with functionalities and taking some shots to check it was working as expected. All seemed well.
Although I didn’t make much of a plan beforehand (lesson learnt!) I took a series of sets of shots of Orion to see what was possible:
Astrophotography Sessions Recap
- 01: Setting up and trying a few settings
- 02: 0.6 sec, 400mm, f/8, 79 shots, ISO 3200
- 03: 8 sec, 400mm, f/8, 81 shots, ISO 3200
- 04: 25 sec, 400mm, f/8, 58 shots, ISO 3200
- 05: 25 sec, 335mm, f/8, 80 shots, ISO 3200
- 06: 25 sec, 335mm, f/8, 80 shots, ISO 3200 (noticeably dustier as the session progressed)
Note
Lining up your target whilst using video mode makes things easier - possibly because of Higher ISO/Gain or perhaps some processing happening for the viewfinder?
It was interesting to see how the images differed - and in the last set, how much the time (and I think dust in the air) impacted the image quality, despite having the same settings:
Obviously quite a lot to do to process all these now, though will probably pick the best one or two batches and work on those. Looks like maybe 04 but will depend on how many good / bad frames in the batch. Going to be a few months where it’s too hot to get out to the desert, so good to have plenty of photos to practice processing on!
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