A couple of weeks back, I was wondering whether to buy or not a new camera, I did a lot of research and my dream of astrophotography came back to haunt me. So I said yes. I will buy a camera, and that time will do what I can to make nice pictures of the sky. So I started reading everything about what is necessary, how to make it, and so on and so on.
In the end I decided by a Canon EOS 60D, since I also want to take normal pictures with it I got a Canon EF-S 17-85mm 1:4-5.6 IS USM and since I was always used to have a super zoom, I also got a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. I got a remote timer as well to not touch the camera while shotting.
I have at that point already read about Light Frames, Dark Frames, Flat Frames, Bias Frames, and stacking. And it was interesting, because i always thought the star pictures are only one shot picture, but many of then are actually hundred and hundred of pictures stacked together to remove noise and get the most faint details.
So I just waited for the first clear night and went out for some pictures. But still I don’t have a tracker, so long exposures are out of the question. But I saw this video of this guy getting an amazing Andromeda Galaxy from many 1.6 sec exposures, so I decided to try it myself.
Finding a dark spot in the city is very hard. But I did the best I could. But i was sad that Andromeda was behind some buildings, so I would not be able to do it. But I didnt want to lose the trip, and pointed my camera to one of the brightest stars in the sky, and shot it.
Arcturus and Muphrid from Bootes Constelation
Full picture post-processed.
Focal Length: 90 mm
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 6400
Shutter: 1.6s
Tracker: None
Stacking: 38
Total exposure: 60.8s
Taken Jul 7th, 2013 around 23:50
I was very happy with all, but again I leaned another lesson. I always thought that light pollution would make it hard to see the stars. What I didn’t expect is that the light pollution also makes the sky glows in long exposure pictures. So I had to do a lot of processing to have a dark sky in the picture.
Another thing that I found very interesting is the power of the long exposures. In the sky with naked eyes, I would see 2 stars, Arcturus and Muphrid. But in the picture many more came to live =D
Colorblind Astrophotography 
This is getting awesome, Caneca! Nie job. I’m looking forward to your colour pictures. I’m very curious to learn what a colorblind astrophotographer can do. 🙂
I am planning to give a try on this astrophotography editor pixinsight.com that they say is the best of the best. They have a 45 day trial, so after I come back from vacation I will get it and see what can be done. =D So I will be able to have more colors on them… =D