Astronomy Adventure - DSLR Astrophotography

The whole point of my astrophotography effort has been to show that you could get some decent photos with a minimum investment of under $500. That included a decent 4.5 inch telescope with a alt-azimuth tracking mount and the use of my iPhone as the camera. When I was out West in August for the total solar eclipse, however, I began to try astrophotography with just my DLSR camera. The skies were incredibly dark out there and the Milky Way was a wide ribbon that wrapped across the sky. Compared to the high ambient light area I live in, it was quite a treat. Unfortunately, my efforts were somewhat stymied by being slightly out of focus, but, even so, I found the results astounding. The photos also prompted me to get a little more familiar with using levels and curves in GIMP a little more productively. All the  original photos were 8 second exposures at f4.5 and high ISO.

Here is the original untouched photo of the Cygnus Rift when in Montana

And after some post-processing in GIMP

And here is the Sagittarius section of the Milky Way untouched from my high ambient light location

And enhanced using GIMP

And here is the untouched version of that same regios from Montana

Proving the old astronomy adage, dark skies are even better than more aperture. Too bad we are losing them at such a fast pace.