Approaching Comet Hartley

[Vanya]

http://spaceweather.com/

This sounds really exiting and as I've very recently started doing a bit of night photography and managed to capture a decent moon shot, an average jupiter and orion, I'm eager to learn more. I would love to not only see this approaching comet with the naked eye but get some fairly decent shots. How about we have a challenge to see what we can get between us and also learn from those of us that are really good at night shots :)

Spaceweather has provided a finder chart which will make life easier as cassiopia is quite easy to find in the night sky
http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/CometHartley2-bw.jpg

Any one interested?

[Vanya]

Here is my Orions' belt shot. I could do with some tips to improve on this so I can take better sky shots

[Quinn]

@vanya Using a tri-pod with night shots helps! Or you can put your camera on anything stationary like a car top (parked) or a friends shoulder if they are still. That keeps the light ftom your subjects stable when filming at a slow speed.

[Josh Sudweeks]

The problem you're going to run into with sky shots is the rotation of the earth. Even though your camera is on a nice stable tripod, you are still moving very fast relative to your subject. You can try to open up your aperture a little more and boost your ISO. You can then run a little faster shutter speed to stop that motion. Also the wider the lens, the less movement you'll see. with a fisheye you might be able to get away with a 30 second exposure, but with a telephoto, just a few seconds is probably all you can do.

If you've got the money to spend, a sky tracking tripod head will be the way to go. I really want to pick up an astrotrac. http://www.optcorp.com/product.aspx?pid=14905 This will move your camera with the stars keeping them sharp, but if you have a horizon in the shot, it will be blurry.

Or you can go with a regular tripod, a couple hour exposure and so something like this -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100618.html

[J A Byrdlip]

A couple hour exposure would be nice, but with a camera that max's at 15 sec, it is hard to get a long exposure. Any tips on how to combine them in PSE6?