Earlier this year I rented a Tamron SP 35mm ƒ/1.4 Di USD lens to use for shooting the Perseids meteor shower. Yes, I know, the Moon was an issue in 2025 but I wanted to test this lens. The reason I was interested in a 35mm ƒ/1.4 can be seen in this article at Clarkvision.com in which he describes the best combinations of aperture vs. focal length to maximize the number of meteors per exposure. And the choice of this particular lens was informed by this review article.
Milky Way with the Tamron 35mm f/1.4 lens. The star Vega is visible at the center bottom and the North America Nebula is located in the upper right.
While I did not capture many meteors (the Moon, remember?) I was impressed with the optical quality of this lens. In fact, I ended up purchasing the rental lens since I had already done my testing with that particular sample.
I have used this lens on a couple occasions to photograph Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in which I used tracking to get a 2-minute exposure of the comet followed by untracked to get a similar exposure of the foreground. The results were further proof that this was a very good lens with sharp stars all the way into the corners.
Earlier this month I put it to another test when I did exposures of the Milky Way and aligned the camera so that the Milky Way passed diagonally across the lens and into the corners. I then stacked ten 2-minute images using Siril.
These images were shot with the aperture wide open at ƒ/1.4, ISO 200, and 120 seconds.
Interestingly, the result was too many stars! Indeed, the wide-open ƒ/1.4 aperture captured so much light that there were too many stars so I used some star reduction techniques available in Siril. The reduction technique resulted in a very pleasing final image presented here.
This will be a useful addition to my collection of astrophotography lenses for capturing wide views (54.3° x 37.7° field) of the night sky.
Many years ago I shot an image of the Milky Way rising behind Wukoki Pueblo in Wupatki National Monument in northern Arizona. Afterwards, I promised myself that I would do that shot again using newer lenses and cameras along with, hopefully, better technique.
Composite image of the Milky Way with Wukoki Pueblo, Wupatki National Monument, Arizona.
I finally committed to getting the photograph earlier this week. The date/time required that the Milky Way be low in the eastern sky so it was not too far above the pueblo. It also required the waxing crescent Moon be high enough in the western sky to illuminate the foreground—but also low enough to set before the Milky Way got too high in the eastern sky.
I took a shot of the foreground and pueblo with an exposure time of 300 seconds using long exposure noise reduction; LENR doubled the total time required for image acquisition to 600 seconds. I wasn’t in a hurry…
And then I waited about 30 minutes for the Moon to set. Fortunately, I had brought a camp chair to sit on.
After the Moon had set I took several 300-second shots of the Milky Way in a very dark sky—again with LENR on.
Once back home, I took the Milky Way shots and did image stacking to remove both image noise and, more importantly, aircraft/satellite tracks. The stack became the background photo to combine with the foreground photo.
The result was pretty good but I wanted to try something more. I imported the Milky Way image stack into Siril, an astrophotograhy software package, and ran the “reduce stars” script. This has the effect of removing and/or dimming most stars while leaving the glow of the Milky Way alone.
The result is shown above.
I think I will try this again with some changes. Looking forward to this.
In late June we had an extended string of days/nights without clouds. So this was a good time to update my Milky Way photographs using an ultra-wide fisheye lens. I did a similar photo shoot in May of last year. As before, I shot from a pullout on the Mormon Lake Village road which gives me a clear view over the top of the lake.
Image of Milky Way over Mormon Lake.Image of Milky Way with star reduction.
The big difference between last year and this year is a new camera. I upgraded from my Nikon D750 to a Nikon D850. The latter has 45 megapixels; the former has 24 megapixels. Big difference and it should result in better resolution of the stars.
I shot two sets of photographs. One set was on an iOptron SkyTracker to follow the motion of the stars; the second set was without tracking to photograph the foreground. Exposure time for both was 300 seconds and were shot with a Rokinon 12mm F2.8 full frame fisheye lens. As a consequence of the fisheye lens the Milky Way appears curved.
The two sets of images (foreground, stars) were then blended together using Photoshop. The result was imported into Siril, an astrophotography software package, to reduce the stars using the Starnet package. Both the normal star image and the reduced star image are shown here.
It should be noted that there was a lot of airglow that evening and the reduced star image helps to see the structure and waves present in the airglow.
It was a successful and fun evening of astrophotography shooting.
We have had several opportunities in March for good-to-excellent night sky viewing and astrophotography sessions. High on my list was capturing NGC 1499 (“California Nebula”). It resides in the western sky during March and is located near Pleiades but is actually in the constellation Perseus.
The nearly vertical zodiacal light shares the western sky with the winter Milky Way and are faintly reflected in the waters of Upper Lake Mary near Flagstaff, Arizona.
One drawback to observing it in the spring is that there can be interference from zodiacal light. From Wikipedia,
The zodiacal light is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. It appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun’s direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac…
…Since zodiacal light is very faint, it is often outshone and rendered invisible by moonlight or light pollution.
I made several attempts at NGC 1499. The first attempt was about as expected as I didn’t actually know where to point the camera so I used a short telephoto focal length (80mm) with a wide field of view (25.3° x 17.0°). Luckily, I pointed it correctly but unluckily I bumped the focus ring and everything had a soft focus. Okay, not a success but not too bad for a first attempt.
First attempt at NGC 1499 (19 March 2025).Third attempt at NGC 1499 (24 March 2025).
On my second attempt I used a longer focal length (180mm) which meant a smaller field of view (11.4° x 13.7°). I had very good focus and other camera settings but managed to actually point it at the wrong object. Instead, I photographed NGC 1579 (“Northern Trifid Nebula”). Oops! But the result was still a success–even if not the object I was seeking.
The third try worked out well. I reverted back to a shorter focal length (85mm) and wider field of view (23.9° x 16.0°) because that might give me a pleasing image with the nebula and neighboring stars. This worked out well except for the previously mentioned zodiacal light. The light was present in the field of view so it was necessary to crop the image to remove the bright band.
I actually prefer the first image as it has better color and less lens flare than the second image.
Finally, I shot images of the zodiacal light using an ultra-wide fisheye lens to capture both the foreground of Upper Lake Mary and the stars and planets up through the zenith. NGC 1499 and NGC 1579 are located to the right of Pleiades but are too small to be visible in this wide view.
The nearly vertical zodiacal light shares the western sky with the winter Milky Way. Annotated to show Pleiades, Jupiter, and Mars. NGC 1499 and NGC 1579 are located to the right of Pleiades.
I have recently started using Siril for my astrophotography processing and have been generally pleased with the results.
A previous post showed many images of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) taken when the comet was visible in the morning sky. The comet then moved between the Earth and Sun making it difficult to see. A period of 10 days passed between my last morning images and my first evening images.
At first, the comet was difficult to see in the bright evening twilight and the presence of the Moon made it even more difficult. But each day the Moon rose later in the evening and the comet rose higher in the western sky. I was able to take advantage of clear skies and shot photographs on eight days. Here are some of the best photographs from those sessions.
13 October 2024
I had already shot images of the comet while looking to the east across Ashurst Lake when it was a morning object. Now it was time to shoot looking to the west across the Lake. The comet was very bright and easy to see. I also shot a long sequence of images to create a time-lapse video of the comet setting in the west.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). 13 October 2024.
Time-lapse video of the comet setting behind Ashurst Lake near Flagstaff, Arizona.
14 October 2024
The next evening I set up at the Arizona Snowbowl parking area–along with dozens of other comet watchers. It was fun to listen to folks admiring the comet and the joy from the kids when they were first able to spot it in the darkening sky. The anti tail was even easier to see on this night compared to the previous evening.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) from Arizona Snowbowl. 14 October 2024.
16 October 2024
The Moon was still a factor in the evenings but the comet was getting higher in the sky so it balanced out. On this evening I went to The Narrows at Upper Lake Mary since that section of the lake is oriented WSW-ENE. This meant I could photograph the comet above the water and get a reflection of it in the water. That worked out pretty well.
Comet and reflection in the still waters of Lake Mary. 16 October 2024.Comet and reflection in the still waters of Lake Mary. 16 October 2024.
20 October 2024
A few days of clouds shut me down but by this day it was very clear and the Moon was no longer a problem. I opted to use a longer telephoto (180mm) for these shots even though it might truncate part of the tail. The anti tail is still visible but is much less striking than in earlier days.
Telephoto view of the comet. 20 October 2024.
21 October 2024
The comet was continuing to rise higher in the western sky and was closer to the Milky Way so I switched back to ultra-wide angle lenses to capture both. Bonus: I was able to again capture the comet and tail reflected in the waters of Lake Mary. For the very wide image shown here I did a composite. The first image had star tracking turned on to get sharp stars and comet; the second image had tracking off to get sharp foreground. These were then combined and blended in software.
Comet and Milky Way reflected in the still waters of Lake Mary.
23 October 2024
The comet continued to climb higher, become dimmer, and have a shorter tail as it moved away from Earth and Sun. I switched to a short telephoto (85mm) to shoot a sequence of images which were then stacked to reduce image noise. I was also able to use the sequence to create a short time-lapse video to show the movement of the comet over a period of about 45 minutes.
Comet and stars using a short telephoto lens. 23 October 2024.
Time-lapse showing the motion of the comet against the background of stars. 23 October 2024.
25 October 2024
As the comet climbed higher it also was closer to the Milky Way and I again tried to get a shot with both features. This was taken with at 35mm focal length.
Comet and Milky Way. 25 October 2024.
31 October 2024
As the comet retreats it is getting smaller in the sky and it is better to use medium length telephoto lenses. Here is an image taken with the Nikkor 180mm ED AI-S lens, a legacy, manual focus lens.
Medium telephoto lens used to image the comet. 31 October 2024.
What’s next?
We are once again in a period of clouds. When skies are once again clear the comet will be much farther away, smaller, and dimmer. At this point, it will require longer exposures and bigger telephoto lenses. It should be fun!
