Thursday 13 January 2011: Orion, the Hunter

"The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone."

- A. E. Housman quotes

I didn't manage to get the Pleiades in this shot (they were too far down towards the trees, and caught in light from the Moon), but I did get Orion and the Hyades.

This was my second attempt at star shooting with my Lumix + tripod. This time I set the ISO to 400. Initially I tried piggy-backing the camera to my telescope, but it was fail: I got bits of telescope dominating the shot, and that seemed to mess up the rest of the shot. So I went back to the Vanguard tripod, but this time used a bigger screwdriver to attach the adaptor plate to the camera. It was certainly more solid. I tried a few different exposure times: 60" and I started to get trails; 30" was ok; but I think this was 15".

I've always liked Orion, and the Hyades include my mother's favourite star: Aldebaran (well, kind of; Aldebaran just happens to be along the same line of sight from Earth, but still....) - so I'm quite pleased with this.

• DMC-G10:
• f/5.6:
• 15":
• 17mm:
• ISO 400

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