Cape Cod (2022)

Cape Cod Picture 1

This noisy little image may be all I get but at least it shows what is not possible from my house.  The image was from a recent trip to Cape Cod for my wife's reunion (Harvard '91). It was on a beach off Surf Drive in Falmouth, MA.  The Skies were surprisingly dark and the Milky Way was as good as it was out west.  This was a 60 second exposure using my my trusty rusty Canon 600D with an Opteka 6.5mm Fisheye Lens at f/5.6 and ISO of 1600.  

Cape Cod Picture 2

This second noisy little image caps what I was able to capture the night on a beach. The image was from a recent trip to Cape Cod for my wife's reunion (Harvard '91). It was on a beach off Surf Drive in Falmouth, MA. There is a lot going on here, for example, the Lagoon Nebula (M8) sits in the upper center and just north of that is the Trifid Nebula (M20). The lower left is the constellation Sagittarius, nicknamed the Teapot. Numerous star clusters are scattered throughout and the dark dust lane bisects the bright Milk Way in two. This image was produced by stacking eight 15 second exposures with a 50mm Canon Lens at f/4 and ISO of 1600.

I would have had another and potentially better image but alas in my hurried haste I goofed up. I collected nine 6o second exposures. When you capture longer exposures you to account for Earth's rotation with a tracking mount which I had. However, the first thing you should do is polar align which is what forgot to do so the stars were tailing.

If you are wondering when you would need a tracker, there is a "rule of 500" where you divide 500 by the focal length of the lens and that number is the maximum time that you take a single exposure before a star shows trails. For example, if your focal length (FL) of the lens is 6.5 mm, then divide 500 by 6.5 you get 77, therefore you can take a 77 sec exposure without trailing. If your lens had a FL of 50 mm, then 500 divided by 50 gives you 10. So anything longer will begin to show trails. So my 15 second exposures do show a tiny amount of streaking, at 60 seconds the streaking was quite bad.