First impressions: a 50mm for astro

The constellation of Lyra

Yesterday I showed you my new lens. Last night I went out for to try it.

Rather than doing it in my garden, I went to a patch in the neighborhood, which was more or less in the middle of farmland. I hoped this would help to limit the background lighting even if there are two medium-sized cities near my town.

And this is what I shot.

There's an annotated version of the shot after the break if your constellations are a bit rusty.

As you can see, the result isn't bad at all. This is a stack of 71 images at 5 second exposure time per frame, which make the total exposure time 5 minutes in 55 seconds. Aperture was set at f/2.0 and ISO at 400. Focal length was of course 50mm. The frames were stacked with DeepSkyStacker using the kappa-sigma method.

I didn't use the Astrotracer as the battery was depleted and I didn't take a new fresh one with me (there's a lesson there). 

Annotated version for those who
don't have a star map in their head

The constellation fits nicely into the field of view and you can make out the binary star on the left of Vega quite nicely. The effects of light pollution are still visible, originating from the left-bottom corner of the frame, but it's not as bad as I've had in images before. 

Still, you won't get clear pictures of the M57 Ring Nebula this way. It is in the picture though: can you find it?