The Deep Sky

From 6/30 - 7/4 2011, I went on a camping trip to Pymatuning Lake on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from any decent sized city.  The skies were nice and dark.  Unfortunately I did not take a telescope, but I did take my GE - X5, and was able to take a few pictures.  I was experimenting with the camera, and one of the problems I have had in the past is that when you zoom, the focus would go out.  I found a setting that fixed that problem.

Here are a couple of wide field images that I took with the camera.  I used varying iso settings, up to iso 3200.  The shutter speed maxes out at 30 seconds, but it is enough to capture dimly the milky way in Cygnus.  Have a look at a few images I've taken.  Vega is the brightest star and is in most of my images.  The images without Vega are looking up at zenith, and Herculese dominated the zenith at the time these were taken, approx 11:00 local time.

Also, I did not have my barn door tracker with me.  The camera was sitting on the ground when these pictures were taken.  The photos of Lyra and Cignus were taken with the camera resting on a cigarette pack, tilted easterly.

The constellations.  Look close on expanded image for the faint haze of the Milky Way going thru Cygnus

Caught another meteor, above and to the right of Vega

The view at zenith

8 second exposure of Lyra

Zoom on Lyra

Zoomed in - Vega

Zoom in on Vega and Lyra