Tag: Nikon D850

Orion in February

In a recent post I talked about a photo session in which I captured images of Orion using a wide-angle lens. My next goal was to use a telephoto lens to zoom in on specific areas. My first effort did not go well. It was cold and windy. My attempts to get the star tracker aligned were mostly unsuccessful — because of the cold and wind. And the lens I used (Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6) was too big and heavy for the tracking mount.

Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion with Star Removal.
Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion with Star Removal.
Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion.
Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion.

I tried again the next night and there was less wind–but it was still cold. This time I used the Nikon 180mm ƒ/2.8 ED AI-S manual focus lens. It is much lighter and easier to focus and it produces a very sharp image by the time it is stopped down to ƒ/4.0. My goal was to capture the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) and the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) plus one or more stars from Orion’s belt.

Both the Horsehead Nebula and the Flame Nebula are in the constellation of Orion and are part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex. (Note: an amusing reference to the “Horace Head Nebula” appears in Isaac Asimov’s “The Stars, Like Dust“. Check it out!) The Flame Nebula is an emission nebula while the Horsehead Nebula is a small dark nebula.

I shot 73 one-minute exposures plus the usual assortment of darks, flats, and bias images. The images were stacked using Siril 1.4 with Star Reduction, histogram stretching using rnc-color-stretch, and finally post processed in Lightroom and Photoshop.

The first image is the result with Star Reduction turned on; the second image is without Star Reduction. I like them both.

Nikon D850, Nikon 180mm ƒ/2.8 ED AI-S @ ƒ/4.0, ISO 400, 73 x 60 seconds.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)–November 2025

There haven’t been too many opportunities to photograph the comet in the first half of November owing to a bright Moon and cloudy skies. But I did get very dark skies on the evening of November 6 and shot a sequence spanning about 15 minutes near the end of twilight and when the comet dropped below the trees. The images were stacked and aligned using Siril and then finished in Lightroom/Photoshop.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 06 November 2025 with a 180 mm lens.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 06 November 2025 with a 180 mm lens.
Black-and-white negative version of Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 06 November 2025 using a 180 mm lens.
Black-and-white negative version of Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 06 November 2025 using a 180 mm lens.

The final image was then converted to a black-and-white negative as this format can show more of the detail in the comet’s tail. It also shows more of the satellite tracks that criss-cross the sky.

It has been fun shooting this comet and now I look forward to the next photogenic comet to grace our skies.

Nikon D850, Nikon 180 mm AI-s, f/4, ISO 200, 7×120 seconds.

Milky Way–June 2025

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 over Mormon Lake.
Image of Milky Way with star reduction.
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.