I recently moved to Central Illinois from the Chicago area. Central Illinois has much darker skies with less light pollution. I can get to skies this dark in only 30 minutes now, compared to 3 hours. Ever since last year I was looking forward to May to get a chance to shoot the milky way again. May finally got here and after a couple clear nights here are the resulting pictures. The Pentax K-5 might just be the best APS-C camera for astrophotography. Click the images to enlarge and for more info about each shot.

[wildman]

I like.
I wonder if there someone a 100 light years away taking pictures of our part of the Milky Way with his/her K5.

[FruitLooPs]

Excellent series, I too have been stoked at how the 16MP sensor handles astro work. Were some of these stacked?

NZ is fairly fortunate with regards to light pollution for which i'm pretty thankful!

[Ash]

Congrats, Kevin.
Well done.
Good results.

[fotogaffer]

Awesome shots! Thanks for posting them.

[paulh]

Beautiful shots - nice work

[krp]

Thanks everyone

Excellent series, I too have been stoked at how the 16MP sensor handles astro work. Were some of these stacked?

NZ is fairly fortunate with regards to light pollution for which i'm pretty thankful!

Only the close up of the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas was stacked: 80 4 second exposures plus dark and bias frames. I would love to see the southern night sky from New Zealand.

[Class A]

I would love to see the southern night sky from New Zealand.

Here are some shots taken with a lowly K100D.

Not nearly as awesome as yours.

[SpecialK]

Love that first one in particular. I am fascinated by all the things in the sky but don't have the patience or determination to photograph them.

[old4570]

Sweet ! , what lens - shutter time .... etc

[daacon]

These are great - what software do you use for staking ?

[DeadJohn]

Sweet ! , what lens - shutter time .... etc

Click the link below each photo. That will take you to a Flickr page with more details.

[VoiceOfReason]

I really need to get those kind of shots.

[DeadJohn]

@krp, excellent images.

Your processing of the Lagoon and Trifid (3rd image from top) was unexpected:

This is a combination of 80 light frames, 25 dark frames, and 25 bias frames. Shot with a Pentax K-5 and a Takumar 135mm f2.5 lens on an ordinary tripod. The images were shot at 4 seconds, f2.5, ISO 12,800. The bigger Lagoon nebula was bright enough to see with the naked eye.

I expected fewer, longer exposures using some sort of tracking mount. 80 * 4 sec = just over 5 minutes on a fixed tripod. How many times did you recompose during the stack?

Also, what software and settings did you use for stacking? I am learning Deep Sky Stacker and Nebulosity. (DSS has a short learning curve and knows how to debayer K5 DNGs. Nebulosity has more advanced post-processing but I've had mixed luck with DNG format.)

[krp]

@krp, excellent images.

Your processing of the Lagoon and Trifid (3rd image from top) was unexpected:

This is a combination of 80 light frames, 25 dark frames, and 25 bias frames. Shot with a Pentax K-5 and a Takumar 135mm f2.5 lens on an ordinary tripod. The images were shot at 4 seconds, f2.5, ISO 12,800. The bigger Lagoon nebula was bright enough to see with the naked eye.

I expected fewer, longer exposures using some sort of tracking mount. 80 * 4 sec = just over 5 minutes on a fixed tripod. How many times did you recompose during the stack?

Also, what software and settings did you use for stacking? I am learning Deep Sky Stacker and Nebulosity. (DSS has a short learning curve and knows how to debayer K5 DNGs. Nebulosity has more advanced post-processing but I've had mixed luck with DNG format.)

Thanks. I'm saving up for the Vixen Polarie tracking mount. But until then I'm limited to short exposures. If I frame the shot correctly then the object will stay in the field of view for 5 minutes or longer so I don't have to recompose. I use DSS but I'm not very good at it. Sometimes I get a final shot I'm happy with and other times I'll use the same setting and get terrible results.