Custom White Balance Constellations Bright familiar constellations are also easy to shoot on a fixed tripod. Because the exposure is relatively short at 30 seconds, and a wide-angle setting was used on the zoom lens, star trailing is not that noticeable or objectionable. A Tiffen Double Fog 3 filter was used to make the bright stars in the image stand out. A custom white balance removed the ugly red-brown sky glow from light pollution.

The constellation of Orion, and the Hyades and Pleiades open clusters set in the west.

Orion is one of the most famous constellations in the night sky. The three distinctive belt stars make it easy to pick out and identify. Orion's many bright stars shine fiercely on cold, crisp, clear winter nights.

The Hyades and Pleiades, are two nearby star clusters where stars have formed recently. The Hyades is about 151 light years away, and the Pleiades lies at a distance of about 440 lights years. The Pleiades is the younger of the two clusters at about 115 million years old, and the Hyades is believed to be about 625 million years old.

This image is a single 30-second exposure at f/4 at ISO 1600 with a zoom lens set to 24mm of focal length.

The camera was manually focused with Live View on the bright star Sirius.

A custom white balance was set in the camera. A test exposure of the same area as in the photo was used to color correct the sky from the large amount of light pollution that was present in the direction where these constellations were setting. A little bit of blue color correction was dialed in with custom white balance fine tuning in the camera's menu.

There wasn't much noise in this image because it was shot at about 35 degrees Farenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius), but in-camera sharpening was turned down all the way because the image was shot in JPEG file format.

The shutter was tripped with the camera's self timer to reduce any possible vibrations or movement that opening the shutter by hand might have caused.

Image Data

• Lens / Scope: Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EF-S Zoom IS lens
• Focal Length: 24mm
• F/stop: f/4
• Exposure: Single 30-second exposure
• Mount: Fixed tripod
• Guiding: None
• Camera: Unmodified Canon EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS)
• Mode: JPEG
• ISO: 1600
• White Balance: Custom, set on sky background
• In-Camera Noise Reduction: Off
• Filter: Tiffen Double Fog 3
• Temp: 35F
• Start Time: 10:39 p.m.
• Date: March 20, 2009
• Location: Maxwell, NJ
• Calibration: None
• Processing: Standard in-camera JPEG processing.