Milky Way advice

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Steve W

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I want to start taking shots of the night sky with my 7dmk2 and wondered what equipment people used to do this?

I am about to go on holiday to Dartmoor so wanted to have a go whilst there as the sky will be darker there than where I live. I don't have a tripod, but after some advice on here I think I'm about to buy a Vanguard tripod 263AB with Ball head, but I am wondered if people also use anything else to aid them, such as remote shutter release or have any general advice for me.

I have motorised telescope mounts which I connect t a laptop via USB to take stacked images of galaxies, so i'm aware you do not want to touch or move the camera at all before and during exposures.

Any help most appreciated.
 
Expect cloud!
A tripod is essential. Can you take a driven mount as that will increase your exposure time before trailing? I don't think people take multiple images and stack for the Milky Way. A remote release can also be considered essential. Do you have one for when you're imaging off the driven mount, or do you not use an slr for that? Apart from that - short, fast lens, high iso and experiment with exposure times. And it'll need some fairly intense pp - histogram stretching etc.
 
My main setup is 7dmk2 on skywatcher 80 ED refractor with guide scope on a EQ5 pro mount with guide scope and camera controlled via USB from my laptop using PHD guiding software for the guidescope and APT software to control the camera. With this setup i can take 2 to 4 min exposures without star trails, although limited because of LP.

However I want a setup that is not so time consuming to setup for when I am away in the UK and I see the nigh sky is clear and just want to go out and take some sky images. So I want to use my Canon 7dmk2 with my 15-85mm lens f3.5 at 15mm on a tripod and take say 15-30 second exposures. I'm just after some advice on whether I need anything else to assist in this like a remote shutter release, do I take multiple images and stack, etc?

Ta
 
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Ah, I see.
You need some sort of remote/cable release to avoid touching the camera, especially as you'll need the bulb setting. You can get an intervalometer pretty cheap these days which will just go ahead and take whatever exposures you set it to. Just get the the correct plug for your camera. I've been playing with a 17-50mm 2.8 lens on my 550D trying to capture the Milky Way recently but I was hampered by the sky conditions. I'm not sure if you'd get 30s before the stars started to trail but you'd have to experiment. I managed to show some of the brighter deep sky objects (the globular clusters in Hercules, the Dumbbell Nebula, even the Ring Nebula in Lyra) in a single exposure of about 25 - 30 s (I was on a driven mount) at iso 400 believe it or not. Faced with a lot of skyglow and a choice of cutting down the shutter speed or iso I chose iso as my camera doesn't deal well with noise. I was very surprised at what can be achieved. I'm not sure how well stacking software would cope with the rotation on wide field through the lens images off a fixed mount.
 
Thanks for your advice.

After I having a quick look I think Remote Release RS-80N3 would fit the bill for £38
 
I'm guessing you can lock the mirror up on your 7D Mark2. If so I would not get a remote release. Lock the mirror up and set the self timer and I don't think you have any vibration showing in the shots.

With your lens at 15mm the maximum exposure before the stars begin to trail is about 20seconds. I say about because there is debate about the "rule" used to calculate it.

Some suggest max. exposure = 600/(focal length of the lens x crop factor), others suggest using 500 instead of 600. In addition it depends what part of the sky is being photographed. In one second stars close to the celestial equator have a great apparent movement than those nearer to the poles. But the 600 (or 500) rule is a good starting point.

Dave
 
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