Doing a little astrophotography preparation

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We are planning a future trip to some really dark sky areas and so I have been trying to develop my fledgling astrophotography skills. 

I managed to snatch an evening of stargazing down at Wembury Beach in south Devon. Not the best viewing skies, but its close to home.

Taking the photograph is getting easier. Processing them to bring out their best - frankly this is a dark art worse than sail trimming; and that is really saying something given how much I suck at that when sailing! 

processing attempt 1 above; processing attempt 2 below

non processed photos from the night 

The problem of having always suffered from memory problems is this.......just as you have learned the main stars and constellations in an evening......you go out a few weeks later and discover..........you have forgotten them all 😂

Still, its all good fun. In the images above, due to our position in the milky way, we see the rest of it as if we were looking at the edge of a plate. To other life in the universe, the galaxy will look spirally disc shaped! 

Meanwhile, these are the best shots I could get of Jupiter. Still learning how to use a smartphone and DSLR on my new telescope. 

I learned afterwards that it is better to video planets and then use a programme to split the video down into individual photo frames and then stack them to get a best detail composite image!

I'll try that next time.