[Title] The Milky Way
[Artist] =octane2

[Description]
Full view for maximum effect.

The Milky Way Centre in Sagittarius

Often times words simply aren't enough, or there aren't superlatives sufficient, to describe the splendour and glory of what is contained within and bounded by the heavens; in this case, the galactic centre and bulge of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

This is an area of the sky which I have long wanted to dedicate myself to imaging. Unfortunately, I've left it too late into the year, and have as a result lost a veritable amount of detail that may have been picked up had I imaged this whilst at zenith. Having said that, I had intended to capture an hour's worth of data and in actual fact, I did capture an hour's worth of data, but lost almost 50% of it due to having had condensation build up on the lens owing thanks to a gradual decline in temperature over a half-an-hour period. Normally, I'd be standing by the side of my setup with a hairdryer at the ready to combat any and all dew settling, but, I didn't think it would be a problem on that particular evening. Still, I managed to salvage 34 minutes of data, and was going to take more sub-exposures, but, Scorpius had conveniently settled behind a tree.

I've developed, or rather adopted (I'm not sure if anyone else does this), a rather nifty way of taking flat frames to combat the dust particles inherent in the optical train and any vignetting due to sensitivity variation over the sensor; by taking photographs of my notebook's screen when it's set to pure white. This works rather well as the screen is backlit and acts as a kind of diffuser. I have, in the past, used an evenly-illuminated wall and the twilight sky as flat fields, but, this requires either having to take the flat frame images at home or waiting until dawn/sunrise. It helps to shoot everything at the same temperature as the light frames and so this method will suffice until I have time to build a lightbox.

There is far too much going on in this image to explain in greater detail. What I will do is list the major points of interest apart from the surrealism apparent in this composition.

* The Lagoon Nebula (M8), an emission nebula: main pink nebula towards centre
* The Trifid Nebula (M20), an emission and reflection nebula: right under M8 as the pink and blue nebula
* M21, an open cluster: right below M20 at the 5 PM position
* Ptolemy's Cluster (M7), an open cluster: centre top partially off-screen
* The Butterfly Cluster (M6), an open cluster: the main cluster of stars where the dark nebula begins in the first third of the screen (from the top) towards the centre
* The Sagittarius Cluster (M22), a globular cluster: the golden hazy spot on the right towards the mid-bottom
* M23, an open cluster: the cluster at centre bottom edge
* M25, an open cluster: across from M23, directly below M22
* M28, a globular cluster: the small golden dot between M8 and M22


I think it may help to load the image and take a few steps back from your screen -- absorb the context of the image as a whole and then perhaps afterwards swim through the various objects present.

Click here to see a 100% crop from the original image; the stars that form part of the cluster in M8 are resolved to the core.

This composite consists of one set of images; one set of 34 images taken at ISO-800.
Each individual image was a 60 second exposure.
IRIS was used to calibrate each image (dark subtraction [median combined master dark] and flat field division [median combined master flat {lights and darks}]), to register, align, and finally stack.
Photoshop CS2 was used to adjust levels, curves, colour balance, frame and resize the final composite.

Target: The Milky Way Centre in Sagittarius
Date: Saturday, September 16th, 2006
Time: First image: 9:07:10 PM
Time: Last image: 10:07:22 PM
Location: Linden, NSW, Australia
Camera: Canon EOS-350D
Lens: Canon EF 50mm F/1.4 (stopped down to F/2.5)
Focal length: 50mm
Mount: Piggy-backed onto an 8" Meade LX90 LNT (F/10)
Alignment: Equatorial; via equatorial wedge
Exposure: 34 x 60 seconds @ ISO-800 (RAW)
Software: IRIS: Calibration, registration, stacking; Adobe Photoshop CS2: post-processing and framing


[octane2.deviantart.com]
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