Some nights things just don't go right - a failed attempt at imaging the cygnus region of the milky way

 From the back garden

With views restricted only to looking North west to East (steep garden, woodland, houses, bright lights - you name it - I'm surrounded by it), astrophotography from the garden can be tricky and restrictive.

However, I have spent the last two nights trying to capture the Cygnus region Milky Way. 

So here are the details of these back garden micro-adventures. 

Target:

• The milky way in the Cygnus region stretching from Deneb down towards Altair

I tried to frame it with Deneb in the top left hand corner down to Altair in the right hand corner of my frame - but that didn't work - bits of house, bits of trees and bushes. The best I could get was it going semi horizontally across the frame - not ideal but hey ho - sometimes you just have to go with the flow. 

Equipment:

I thought I'd give CoPilot AI a go and get it to recommend to me what equipment I should use and what settings as well given the date, bortle sky area and moon phase. And, surprisingly, it wasnt far out! 

• Astromodded canon 800D
• Samyang 14 mm F/2.8 lens
• SWSA 21 with William Optics wedge
• Benbro Mach 3 carbon fibre tripod
• MSM green laser pen for polar alignment
• Two power banks - one for camera and one for dew heater band
• Samsung A10 galaxy tablet for white screen for flats 
• Aoelan intervalomneter - wireless remote 
• GoPro Hero 9 action cam with small cvub light and amazon basics tripod for videoing

Settings:

Cloudless skies from 0030 and light winds. Temperature around 15C throughout the night. Moon at 53% and growing larger following night. 

Taking all this into account - my initial test shots and histogram review suggested:

• ISO 800
• shutter speed 30"
• aperture F/2.8
• best shooting times 0030 to 0230

And, CoPilot - got all that right! Go figure! 

I ended up with 100 useable light frames, 25 darks, 30 biases and rubbish flats which I had to reject - they came out a horrible orange colour and I have absolutely no idea why - so they have been ditched. 

However, I also came out with some terrible coma and star trailing at the edges - and again I have no idea why.

Some sessions just work well. Others, well they serve up a horrible  'porridge' of mistakes and errors. Still, the best learning comes from analysing our mistakes, doesn't it. 

Below is the final image - full of mistakes: 

So, what are the errors? 

• A lack of sharpness to the stars - it was very evident that there were some coma issues on all of the images - particularly around the edges - and there was nothing I could do to sort it
• I think my Ball Head was slipping through the night - very slow, almost unperceptible, creep
• I think my star adventurer 2i tracker clutch may not have been tight enough

Since then, I have checked over the tracker, sorted and repaired the ball head, and checked my samyang lens focus.

This really is a poor image and I just can't account for the disasters you can see in it. 

My very first star trail - a mixed bag of successes

 Here is the very first star trail I have ever taken. I'm really pleased with it - not because its a great image - but because the story behind its acquistion is one of persistence and perserverence. 

Let's jump in and unpick the story behind it. 

Location: Wembury Beach in South Devon - the building is the old Mill House owned by the National Trust 

Image details: 

• 90 x 30" lights with 2" interval between photos
• ISO 800
• F/2.8

Equipment: 

• Astromodded Canon 800D
• Samyang 14mm F/2.8 mm lens
• Benbro Mach 3 Carbon fibre tripod
• Joby Gorillapod 5Kg ball head
• one power bank for dummy camera battery
• one power bank for dew band heater
• Neewer dew band heater 

Issues on the night: 

• car lights from cars entering and exiting the car park above the mill house
• red head torch glow from other astrophotographers visiting the site 
• facing a direction and part of the sky which had regular plane traffic crossing it 

So, where does the persistence/perserverence part come into the story? 

I used two programs to obtain the image - STARSTAX and AFFINITY PHOTO v1. 

A straight starstax of the original, unedited files, gave me this image: 

It is straight out of my astromodded camera and has some sort of artistic merit I am sure. The Andy Warhol image of the astrophotography world! 😉

What I wanted to do was to batch edit the 90 photos in one go in Affinity photo - simple things - quick edits - so that I could just try Starstax: 

• white balance adjustments
• colour adjustments
• contrast adjustments
• shadows and highlights adjustments
• sharpness and noise adjustments 

The first step - batch editing the 90 RAW files and converting them into TIff files for Starstax - went off without a hitch.

And then I descended into a three hour long hell - Dante's pit deepest level stuff. 

Affinity Photo would record a macro of the adjustments I made on one of the photos but wouldn't then send it to the library so that I could then batch apply the changes to all the other images. 

In desperation - I asked 'CoPilot' for help. 

Three hours later.........

CoPilot suggested all sorts of fixes - none of which worked.

 It gave me alternative methods - none of which worked.  

Between every new suggestion it - reassured me that it wasn't my fault. It assured me that the next fix was the one that would work immediately. It thanked me for my patience and reminded me again (and again, and again....and again) that none of this was my fault. 

At the end of three hours - it told me that this was a known fault with affinity photo version one and so there was nothing I could do about it!  And thanked me for my patience! 

No, seriously, that was its parting message to me.  I didn't mind the trying of the different fix approaches - that was fine - a problem solving step by step approach. Up for that. 

It was the condescending claptrap - lines of it - between each fix which drove me up the wall. It was like a parent trying to sooth a stroppy toddler or teenager. All praise, all support - "not your fault, you are such a good boy waiting so patiently and dont worry I will definitely fix this for you - you need to do nothing!"

For Pete's sake!  😠😭

Lessons learned:

• Know when to bail out on CoPilot
• after doing the basic edits - take time to do some masking - so that the foreground detail is drawn out further - and the sky stars are enhanced
• some good noise reduction and clarity work on the sky and stars 

Photographing the milky way on Wembury Beach in south Devon, UK

Three nights on Wembury Beach chasing the Milky Way… One night crystal clear, one night a cloud‑soaked betrayal. The last night - perfect skies but busy!  Tracked shots, driftwood foregrounds, a meteor cameo, annoying headlights and phone screens — and plenty of tea brewed under the stars. New blog post.

Three Nights on Wembury Beach: Chasing the Milky Way Over South Devon

After the Durdle Door Debacle (which you can read about here - https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/my-second-milky-way-session-of-2026.html), I decided it was time for a confidence‑restoring mission. So, I headed back to familiar territory: Wembury Beach, South Devon, where the Milky Way would rise neatly over the Newton Ferrers headland just after midnight, like a cosmic lighthouse beam brightening the night sky.

Images from The Durdle Door Debacle

It is clear I just haven't got image collection and then post editing nailed down yet - a major work in progress! 

I gave myself three nights for Wembury Beach.
One turned out beautifully clear.
The second … well, let’s just say the clouds had other plans.

And the third? 

Headlights, phone screens, white head torches - so many rejected images! 

But that’s astrophotography for you — part science, part art, part cosmic roulette.

 

My Goals for all three Nights

I kept things simple and focused:

• Capture good-quality Milky Way data, both tracked and untracked
• Take midnight landscape shots with actual thought behind the composition (a personal growth area…)
• Attempt some form of Milky Way selfie
• In post-processing, balance sky and foreground exposure for a clean composite blend

Basically: redeem myself after Durdle Door and come home with something worth showing the internet.

 You can read here, how I plan a milky way imaging session: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first.html  and https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_19.html

Night One: Clear Skies and Cosmic Calm

The Milky Way would be at its best between 01:00 and 02:30, with high tide at 00:30 — a detail worth checking unless you enjoy wet feet and expensive equipment baptisms.

I rolled into the National Trust car park around 23:45, and by midnight I was on the beach, headtorch glowing and arcing about like a confused firefly. Thanks to a daytime recce, I already had two compositions in mind:

1. Sitting on a log with the Mill House and Milky Way behind
2. A wider shot of beach, driftwood, and Mill House under the rising core

Conditions were a dream:
Clear skies, 8°C, barely a whisper of wind. The sea behaved itself. No spray. No drama. Just the quiet hush of the tide and the occasional owl wondering what on earth I was doing.

Shooting Workflow across the night 

I worked through a structured sequence:

• Tracked portrait frames
• Untracked portrait frames
• Switch to landscape orientation
• Repeat: tracked → untracked
• GoPro night timelapse movie

Camera Settings

• Untracked: ISO 1600, 20 seconds × 15 frames, f/2.8
• Tracked: ISO 1600, 80 seconds × 20 frames, f/2.8 

Gear List (for the fellow kit nerds)

• Canon 800D (astromodded)
• Samyang 14mm f/2.8
• Aoelean wireless intervalometer
• Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i (WiFi)
• William Optics wedge
• Benbo Mach 3 carbon fibre tripod
• USB power bank
• Sky-Watcher right‑angled polar viewer
• MSM green laser with SWSA2i attachment
• Gorillapod 3kg ball head
• Petzl headtorch (with red mode, obviously)
• Dew band heater 
• Joby Gorillapod small tripod with phone holder attachment
• GoPro Hero 9 

Between sequences, I brewed tea on my Primus Lite Jetboil stove — its soft hiss and occasional roar felt oddly comforting. I prefer a stove to a flask; it reminds me of my mountaineering days and my more recent dinghy‑cruising adventures (which you can find on my YouTube channel: ).

There’s something grounding about making tea under the stars.  

 

I haven't quite got the brightness sorted - both images are a little dark.

Tonally, the blues and magentas are a little strong in the sky. 

Night Two: The Great Cloud Betrayal

Five weather apps promised clear skies.
Five.

Naturally, the moment I arrived, the sky filled with thin, high cirrus — the kind that looks innocent until you realise it’s basically a giant cosmic diffuser.

We had 80% cloud cover for the entire session. I stayed, of course. Hope springs eternal in the heart of an astrophotographer.

The only consolation?
One frame — just one — caught a meteor streaking through the murk. A tiny victory, but I’ll take it.

Some nights are like that. The sky gives you a polite “no” and you pack up, slightly cold, slightly grumpy, but still weirdly satisfied.

Equipment and capture details remained similar to Night one. But, when I got home - all the imagesd were ditched. Every single one had excessive clouds in. 

Night three: far too much going on 😕

Too many astrophotographers in close proxsimity - and then cars in and out of the car park on the cliff top; people with phone screens and white head torches! So much movement across my frames at times - and, frustratingly, it was the best sky across the three nights 😭. The milky way positively glowed - like scattered diamonds across a black velvet cloth backdrop  - you get my drift! 

I did have a shooting plan for this night - rather than my normal 'random' approach

• do a star trail above the mill house
• take a series of landscape shots from 2 different parts of the beach area (the tide was out fully) - the aim to take at least three shots of each location scene so I could stack each set of three in affinity photo to get a really sharp landscape foreground. 
• take a series of tracked shots and then untracked shots from each of the locations above
• try out my google pixel 6a on astrophotography mode

I did manage to get all the data but a quick glance confirms my suspicions - lots of random lighting and ghostly shadows..... did I say it was sooooooo frustrating? 

 

Processing the Milky Way Images

Back home, everything will go into Affinity Photo’s AstroStack.
After stacking, I will move through:

• Develop Persona for initial corrections
• Photo Persona for the heavier lifting

If you’re curious about how I edit my Milky Way images, I’ve written about my workflow here:

https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/12/editing-tutorial-guide-to-how-i-post.html

 https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/some-sessions-give-you-diamonds-others.html

I am in the process of updating my work flow and when I have finished it - I will post a summary here as an update - giver me a couple of weeks. 

Final Thoughts

Three nights on Wembury Beach reminded me why I keep coming back to this coastline. Even when the clouds misbehave, even when the apps lie, even when the universe throws curveballs — there’s still magic in the process.

Clear skies aren’t guaranteed.      Good data isn’t guaranteed.   You can't predict random interventions! 

But the experience? Always worth it.

And when the Milky Way finally arcs over the headland, bright and delicate like spilled sugar across black velvet (I like this analogy better) — well, that’s the moment that keeps you, and me, coming back.

The Cosmic dust in the city Project University of Plymouth

New to my blog? You can drop in here first to learn more about me and the blog: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/p/welcome-to-my-astronomy-and.html

As the blog grows, I want it to stay easy to navigate. To help with that, I’ve put together a simple guide that explains how everything is arranged and how to find things quickly:

• Want to Find Something Quickly on My Blog? https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/12/want-to-find-something-quickly-on-my.html

You’ll also see labels, categories, and series developing over time so you can follow particular themes - whether that’s equipment, observing sessions, learning logs, or location-based posts. Anyway, welcome and enjoy. I hope ytou find something useful.  Steve  

 If  you have read previous posts recently, you will know that I am participating in a citizen science project "Cosmic Dust in the City Project"  - run by The University of Plymouth. 

You can read previous posts here: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/cosmic-dust-in-city-project-university.html

And find out about the project here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/public-engagement-at-plymouth/cosmic-dust-in-the-city

This was the kit I received from the University a few days ago - very simple equipment but a comprehensive approach and methodology. 

Well today, here was my first go! 

My first mistake: over-ambition and over-zealousness!

This was just a 30cm length worth of my guttering clear out! 

Following the instruction card step-by-step, I mixed the guttering contents in water and gave it a good stirring. 

After allowing material to mix and then settle, I scooped off all the floating debris

Time for some 0.5mm diameter sieve action 

Well this was the stuff that got caught by the sieve 

What then followed was thirty minutes or so of gently sieving out the water mixture and then doing what can only be described as panning for gold! I used two old ice cream tubs to gently siphon off the ater and fine floating material using a panning motion until I was left with the heavy particles whicvh had made it through the sieve and sunk to the bottom

here are a few more initisal mistakes. Firstly I followed the instructions about drying out the wet sediment on paper. However, they didn't specify what paper type! paper towel seemed a good idea at the time but.......on second thoughts!  In addition, there is sooooo much sediment....which has heaped and so will take some drying out. 

I remember in Prof. Steve's live teams meeting saying to us all - if you have lots of material - its going wrong somewhere! Basically, 99.999999999% of this stuff will be iron based roofing material! 

I did go off piste with this sample. My gutter material was so dry that there was lots of very fine dust left in the gutter and so I ran the bagged magnet over that and to my surprise lots got picked up that way as well! I won't submit this as it wasnt collected properly; and also the particle sizes are very varied - some well over 0.5 mm. I think a friend has a microscope and I might try and borrow it and see what I have got though - curiosity! 

Once the wet stuff has dried out - I will have a go at doing the doubloe bag magnet trick with that and that will be the sample I send back to the university. 

This citizen science stuff is exciting. It may take a few goes to perfect the technique though. 

Cosmic dust in the city project

 My Cosmic dust in the city project pack has arrived. 

Phials, plastic bags, magnet, fine sieve, petri dish, instructions and more 

May the gutter sweeping begin! Really looking forward to this.