Wesley's Tool-Box

When I look outside the window of my apartment in the city with a million people, stars are hard to spot. But the camera can see much more than that for me. Of course, the light pollution still prevents seeing really dim stuff, but it does capture what I would be able to see with my naked eyes in a remote place.

To make best use of the situation, I have to point the camera high up. The lower part of the sky simply drowns in ambient lights. The photo of the constellation Boötes here spans altitude from 34 to 56 degrees in the eastern sky. Even after adjusting the curves and levels settings, the sky below 45 degrees simply doesn't get dark enough. Meanwhile, faint stars all the way to magnitude 9 can be found here and there, but only up to magnitude 7 can be spotted consistently.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 48mm - ISO 400 - 15s - f/4.0
Time: 2013-12-13 06:07 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

In testing the long exposure capabilities of my Canon SX50 HS, I was able to capture the constellation Lyra in its near entirety by accident. Due to cloudy weather and bad light pollution, only the brightest star, Vega was visible to the naked eye. I intended to take a picture of this, but the 1-second exposure revealed the other stars in the constellation as well. I've labeled them in the photo. You can also take a look at the full resolution photo HERE.

Settings: 165mm(6.875x) - ISO 1600 - 1s
Time: 2013-08-07 00:17:01