The mounting turns out to be the important thing

[fivemack]

With a clever bit of mechanism to keep it pointed in the right direction, you can get quite reasonable pictures of the stars with a moderately fancy camera and lens from a desolate fen a mile outside Horningsea:

Comments

[rwl.livejournal.com]

Really nice! How about some info on exposure times and the like? Also, this part of the night sky is pretty close to where Comet Lovejoy has been located this month. Were you able to image that?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

These are all 60-second exposures at ISO 800 f/2.8, with the levels shifted in Photoshop to make empty sky black rather than orange. The top two are cropped, the third is a full frame at 70mm. The green blob in the middle of the second image is Comet Lovejoy.

I tried some more pictures last night, but was plagued with self-loosening screws.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

This confirms for me that Comet Lovejoy is not nearly the noteworthy object that some news reports describe it.