Last Friday night I led a field trip/nightscape shoot for my current astrophotography class.
I drove out to the Boorowa district late afternoon arriving around sunset. I had already chosen the old rail bridge as one location. I wanted to arrive in the light so I could walk around and identify trip, slip and fall hazards before I had 8 people walking around in the dark.
I first drove further out and stored the location of this canola field in my GPS so we could find it again in the dark. One nightscape of this canola field captured at ISO25000 was posted in another thread called "Fields of Gold." Another captured at ISO 3200 is below.
Then returned to the bridge to check out the ground conditions around the bridge.
So it was 550pm and the class not due to arrive for 3 hrs??? I listened to the news on the radio, emailed my class with the above pictures of the two locations. I checked in to
TSS (of course), facebook, email etc. Then I ate a sandwich I'd made myself for dinner. 630pm.... Hmm 2.5 hrs to go. Going to be a long night. I put the seat back and had a bit of a rest. At 745pm astronomical twilight had ended and a prominent Zodiacal light was reaching up to the head of Scorpius. I took the camera out and captured a couple of attempts. Passing cars spoilt a couple of attempts. This one had no headlights.
The Milky Way doesn't set until after midnight at this latitude (34S) so I didn't want to start them too early. The group arrived around 9pm. After a quick sky orientation with laser pointer, we prepared to walk out to the bridge. I left my camera in the car and walked out to the bridge leading the group. It's only a 100m walk but with wet very slippery clay in places and vey uneven ground. After an hour of nightscape by starlight shooting, I walked back to the car, grabbed my camera, tripod, remote release and a variable brightness orange filtered LED light source. I walked to a spot well away from the group and where my light was equidistant from the bridge and well away from the group, I illuminated the bridge with the filtered source and with a plain led flashlight. After that was done, I liked the aspect and the fact that the group were all clustered together on the right of the bridge so I rattled off a 3 frame panorama.
After that I returned to the group, took two shots one with, one without the group visible.
This one is destined to be used for future course promotions
This one is for me.
Damp ground was giving everybody cold feet so we retreated back to the cars and drove 7km west to the canola field. The whole group set up for a star trail sequence. Unfortunately, our cameras dewed over before the sequence could be completed. However some of the early images turned out quite well. I have already posted another frame in this sequence in a different post.
We wound up at 130am and drove home arriving at 245.
All in all, a very enjoyable and productive night.
Joe
Every astrophoto in this article had near identical settings.
Pentax K1 30s @ ISO 3200 or ISO 6400. Samyang 14mm @ f2.8
Amateur astronomer since 1978
...................Web site : http://joe-cali.com/
Scopes: ATM 18" Dob, Vixen VC200L, ATM 6"f7, Stellarvue 102ED, Saxon ED80, WO M70 ED, Orion 102 Maksutov, ST80.
Mounts: Takahashi EM-200, iOptron iEQ45, Push dobsonian with Nexus DSC, three homemade EQ's.
Eyepieces: TV Naglers 31, 17, 12, 7; Denkmeier D21 & D14; Pentax XW10, XW5, Unitron 40mm Kellner, Meade Or 25,12
Cameras : Pentax K1, K5, K01, K10D / VIDEO CAMS : TacosBD, Lihmsec.
Cam/guider/controllers: Lacerta MGEN 3, SW Synguider, Simulation Curriculum SkyFi 3+Sky safari
Memberships Astronomical Association of Queensland; RASNZ Occultations Section; Single Exposure Milky Way Facebook Group (Moderator) (12k members), The Sky Searchers (moderator)
) to spend time with my brother & nephew and visit other family and friends. Might be able to catch up with you then. 
