Meteor Hunt/First Attempt at Astrophotography

i305.photobucket.com...

First attempt at night shooting with a 1995 6 Mega Pixel Digital Camera
F5.6 ISO 1000 30 second exposure of Venus( Just above and to the left of the moon in the south eastern sky in Edmonton Alberta Canada around 130am.
Shot on the Lake Eden Road.
Saw lots of small flashes of light but they were too random and too fast for the camera. As near as I can tell from the Manual the shutter speed is from 1/25th of a second to 30 seconds max. What I wanted was a ten minute or longer exposure to capture some star tracks or a straight up shot with a 30 minute or better exposure to create a circular star track. As it is I got lots of the spherical aberrations from the long lens 170mm I was using in manual mode because the auto focus would not stop hunting at maximum focus.
Interesting to find out my own and the equipments limits. I have posted two images on photo bucket. Try your own lucki305.photobucket.com...

[edit on 13-8-2008 by SUNRAY06]

Is it to assume that you also did not use a shutter release, and this is the effect of pressing the camera's button?



Here's the full picture with contrast & light ........ nice colors !!

The shutter release is automatic..I set up the tripod and set focus..press the shutter and then a light counts down and then opens the shutter without me having to touch it again. I may have touched the tripod during this shot. I made a lot of mistakes I have some nice spheres stars at max lens no focus.
Thanks for looking. John Lenard Walson has some GOOD EQUIPMENT if his pictures are to be believed. Also found out I had a sun filter on so that explains the pretty colours. Thanks for the enhancement

[edit on 13-8-2008 by SUNRAY06]