I decided to try to take some photos of the night sky during the new moon a few days ago. Due to the urban light pollution, you don't see a whole lot but Photoshop helped reveal a bit more than the naked eye can see, which I thought was pretty cool.
Here is my first original shot. Not too bad. I think the 30 second exposure was just a bit too long because it seems to catch some of the movement of the stars and they look a little "dragged" but overall not bad:
At the bottom in the middle you can see Orion's shoulders and two of the three stars in his belt.
I opened the RAW file and jacked up the exposure, essentially overexposing the shot quite a bit. I was able to clean up some of the background noise in Photoshop as well.
(edit....Kelev pointed out in the comments that Comet Holmes is clearly visible in this photo at pixel X 1067 Y 1687. In English, about 1/4th of the way across from the left corner and 1/4th of the way up. If you open the picture in some kind of editor and zoom in it's very clear. You can see the nucleus and the coma quite clearly. Hopefully I can spot it again and zoom in a bit for a picture)
And a similar shot (the cluster in the bottom right is now at the top left)
And the overexposed version with Photoshop correction to darken the background:
Comments
I love that area, it's great. I have a friend who lives in Enfield CT, and all his wife's family is up in Northampton.
I'm heading to Litchfield CT this weekend. Should be nice and dark there.
Thanks for pointing that out, I don't think I'd ever have noticed on my own.