Latest shots from my experiments in photographing the night sky. No telescope, just my Digital SLR camera and a tripod. Click on the images to see larger versions.
Jupiter and its 4 largest moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Nikon D7000, 18-200mm lens, ISO 1000, f/5.6, 0.25 second exposure.
The Orion Nebula (M42).
Nikon D7000, 18-200mm lens, ISO 6400, f/5.6, 2.5 second exposure.
Pleiades star cluster.
Nikon D7000, 35mm lens, ISO 3200, f/1.8, 5 second exposure.
Night sky. Pointed the lens straight up, did a long exposure, wanted to see how many stars I could get in the image.
Nikon D7000, 35mm lens, ISO 800, f/1.8, 30 second exposure.
Tau Zero 
Very nice pictures.
I also tried to shoot the night sky with a Nikon D40 (50mm) and my tripod, but I encountered 2 problems. First, I was surrounded by too much artificial light from the city, and secondly (because I used long exposure times 30sec+), i had the stars moving around on the night sky. How did you compensate for that in your last photo (the one with 30 sec exposure time)? Did you use a tripod which tracks the earths movement?
Thanks.
These are great shots, such amazing detail! At iso 1000, I imagine you had quite a lot of noise to contend with. And I’m also curious how you were able to take a long exposure without tracking any star movement.
Thanks for visiting and the comments! There is a small amount of star motion in the image. The RAW images are 4928 x 3264 pixel resolution – when you zoom into 1:1 you can see it. But when I resize the image to 1280 x 1024 for posting to my site that detail is lost.
There was not much noise at ISO 1000. I recently upgraded to the Nikon D7000 in part for it’s low light capability and I am very pleased so far. The camera will go up to ISO 6400 in “normal” mode, and it has two extended ISO modes that go up to ISO 25600. Camera also has specialized noise reduction for both long exposures and high ISO settings.
Great capture. Thanks for taking us beyond the realm of Earth.
loved it
You’re killing me. First jupiter and it’s moons knocked me out, but finding the Orion Nebula killed me.
I love my Astronomy but I’m car less and live in the city. I wish I could see these sights.