In The UK,

Lee takes pictures of the night sky,

and this is one of them, part of the Milky Way, knowing that I am thinking of buying a better camera as the one I use now is showing it's age and I have been waiting to see the moon at night to take a few pictures of it, he sent me this picture taken from his back garden in Sidcup, Kent, during the day he is the manager in my shop but at night he sets up his Cannon 550d camera and takes a few shots, I say a few shots, this picture has 60 separate frames, here is how he does it, this from Lee,

'the brightest star is vega,

there is a lot of light pollution so take,

60 separate frames  ie 30 @6500iso  18 sec each @18mm on cropped sensor camera cannon 550d,

30 light frames,

30 dark frames (lens cap on) this gets rid of noise with high iso, I can go to 12500 with my camera,

then stacked with a program called deep sky stacker (free download),

you need plenty of processing power from your computer to get out info from the exposures,

ps you must also use the RAW setting on the camera then convert to jpeg when finished.'

what a great shot, I know mine will never be anywhere near as good, I am guessing the Lee has a tracking device on his telescope to keep the camera moving with the earth's rotation, but hopefully when I receive my new camera the skies will be clear so I can take a picture or two of the moon.