Thursday, January 29, 2009

La Silla - Noche

Night time at La Silla Observatory, Chile. A view of southern skies - marvelous things we can't see from the north hemisphere - the southern Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Coulds . . . spectacular!




The two images above are 3 minute exposures through an Canon EOS 5D MKII and Sigma 8mm lens at f/3.5 ISO 2000. Below is a sum of 80 three minute exposures through the same system then rectilinearized.



I didn't have a tracking mount to do any deep space photography so I tried my hand at seeing what the new Canon EOS 5D MKII can do at high ISO's and short exposures. Here are the results.


The Large Magellanic Cloud - Canon EOS 5D MKII | 85mm F/1.2 @ F/1.4 | 30 seconds | ISO 3200.


The NTT (left) and 3.6 Meter Telescopes. Canon EOS 5D | 85mm | F/1.4 | 30 seconds | ISO 3200.


Crux and the Coal Sack area of the southern Milky Way. Canon EOS 5D MKII | 85mm | F/1.4 | 30 seconds | ISO 3200.

5 comments:

Dean said...

Hi Dave-
Spectacular images! A question - right now from the northern hemisphere the Zodiacal light is very prominent. From the south the ecliptic angles more severely from the horizon - is it as obviously visible or barely so?
-Dean

Tuguldur said...

wuoooooooouuuuw!

Unknown said...

Dean - no the Zodiacal light from here this time of year is slanted heavily to the north and therefore is like our summer Zodical light. It is visible but only because of the severely dark skies.

Jim said...

Hey, those southern skies look a little bit "cloudy" - Magellanic Cloudy, that is. I was looking to see the "upside down" Orion and in your fisheye all sky shot, it looks right-side up (but not relative to the horizon!). You having any trouble not falling off the Earth down there? Afterall, you're upside down. ;)

Simmons B. Buntin said...

Great shots David, as always.