Hoping for the Best
After a long day on the road, we rolled up to Kopalino and I’ll bet I spent more time looking at the sky than I did the village. Lots of clouds but I was hoping they’ll blow out after sunset so I could chase my goal of capturing Andromeda. Mind you, Kopalino is another 5 degrees North of Krakow, so the sunsets were late and long.
My son and I headed out on our first night in town to find a spot away from the streetlights. There was a nice breeze and sure enough, the clouds ended up rolling out. We were tired, so the plan was to just take a few snaps and then head in for the evening.
Once the sun went down, man, it was a totally different scene than in Krakow. The difference in light pollution was pretty stark. The Milky Way was faint but clearly visible in the sky above us. And Andromeda was ripe for shooting. Here is a recap of our week.
Andromeda and Deneb – 07/31/21
Tonight was just the teaser trailer for the week ahead – or so we thought. At the time though, we were just enjoying the evening. The breeze was light and warm and we found a nice spot just off a road that was perfectly hidden from any surrounding house or street lights.
We only took 70 photos with the 50mm at f/2.8, ISO 1600, at 2 seconds each. I decided against taking any darks or flats because we were just testing that night. Below is the resulting stack for our effort.
Pretty impressive for just over 2 minutes’ worth of signal!
I also wanted to take another crack at Deneb and the North American Nebula that week, so we ran the same quick setup. Here’s a look at the stack from that test.
Both of these photos were just quickly stacked with minimal post-processing. The plan was to take a whole lot more photos over the course of the week. Hindsight always being 20/20, if I had known the weather was going to have been so crappy, I would have stayed out all night that first night!
The big takeaway from these tests was the quality of the photos under these sky conditions. With so much less light pollution, the signal came through so much cleaner with the sky being so much darker. Especially with the Deneb photo; in just a two-minute integration, I produced a better photo than anything I took in Krakow while imaging for nearly 10 times longer.
Andromeda – 08/03/21
We were having a great time at the seaside. That said, the weather was very erratic. It was a never-ending drill of sun, clouds, rain, then sun again. The skies just didn’t want to clear and I had to wait 3 nights before getting my next crack at shooting.
The skies weren’t totally clear, so we just camped out in the front yard of our cottage. It was humid and chilly so there was little sense in hiking out into the fields if we weren’t sure we were going to be able to shoot. But our patience paid off and the sky opened up in front of Andromeda and we got right to it.
We ended up taking 600 photos along with the dark and flat frames. I was very excited to get back inside to start processing.
As we were starting to pack up, I got my first sense that things went sideways. My tripod was dripping wet. Being so close to the sea, the air was very humid. I didn’t see at the time how this was going to be a problem, but coupled with a big temperature drop after dark – condensation.
My fears were confirmed once I processed the image. It’s not terrible, but you can see the moisture caused all kinds of weird color casts and halos in the photo. I didn’t mention this before, but the only disappointing thing about the 50mm lens is that it didn’t come with a lens hood. Apparently, that’s something I desperately needed.
Well, needless to say, I didn’t spend any additional time trying to post-process this image. I had bigger issues to worry about. Namely, the next day was the only other day for our stay where the weather was at least forecast to be mostly clear. And the conditions were expected to be similar. What to do?
Andromeda – 08/04/21
Woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. I took the liberty to scout a new location and found the perfect spot which was about a 10-minute walk from our place. Middle of an open field with no lights around whatsoever. It was still part of the town, but very much away from the town – and there was a reason for that which I’ll mention in a bit.
That’s one problem down, but what am I going to do about a lens hood and how am I going to keep dew from forming without a heater? Well, the former was easy to fix. I measured and cut the top of a paper cup off and then wrapped the whole thing with black electrical tape to add stability and further repel any moisture. It fit rather snug and actually seemed to snap into place. Excellent!
But a dew heater would not be in the cards for tonight. So the plan is that my son and I will trade off fanning the camera throughout the imaging session. The best we can do is to try to keep air moving around the lens to prevent moisture build-up.
Evening came and we hiked out to our spot and got all set up. I left the lens cap on to stave off any moisture as long as I could. Now we were just waiting for the stars to peek through the twilight. It was amazingly peaceful. The only company we had was a throng of bats that constantly buzzed us as we were attracting quite a bit of attention from evening insects (and yes, we were sprayed up). We didn’t mind, it was kind of cool actually.
Now the reason for the dark and peaceful environs is that we set up about 250m away from the town cemetery. Of course, I conveniently left that out of the discussion with my son. But man, it was quiet and peaceful. Another 15 minutes and we’d be ready to start taking photos.
My boss told me once that no good plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Well, I couldn’t help but think of that talk when I glanced over at my son who I could see in the pale light of our lantern was turning blue! The temperature was dropping quickly and even though we were properly dressed, the humidity just cut right through him. He implored me to go on, but once I started hearing the rhythmic chatter of his teeth, I knew I needed to get him inside.
So we packed up and headed back to the cottage. Once we got back, I set up again in the front yard and he went inside to warm up. He rejoined me a few minutes later and right on time too as I just finished focusing and was ready to shoot.
The rest of the evening went great. I’m kind of glad that there weren’t many people around who could see us. I’ll bet we looked mighty funny taking turns fanning a camera with a taped-up lens hood. But it’s hard to argue with success and that is what we had that night.
This is the first picture that I produced that I was really happy with. It’s not perfect by any means and I have a long way to go with my post-processing skills, but I couldn’t have been happier with the colors and the details that came through in the photo. Another one for the Astrophoto Gallery…
I know there are limits to what I am going to be able to capture just using a DSLR and a tripod without tracking. But for what it is, I’m quite proud of it.
Time to Head Home
That was the last suitable night for taking photos. While it was disappointing that I couldn’t get out again, I was nonetheless thrilled with what I accomplished. I learned a lot and had a lot of things to think about as I continue in this hobby.
And of course, you can’t beat time with your family. All in all, it was a great vacation.
But all things do pass and we piled into the car to start our long journey back to Krakow. Once back home, I went ahead and ordered a lens hood for the 50mm lens. I really liked my DIY solution, but I needed something a little more fit-for-purpose.
Now it’s time to simply wait for the next clear night to get out and get back to shooting.