On 25 May 2004 06:18:19 -0700, (Jeremy Taylor)
wrote:

Hi all,

On a whim I bought a Sony Cybershot p93 whilst in Singapore the other
day.
So I took it out into the garden that night, laid it flat on it's back
and took a few shots.

Impressive results - it was picking up stars down to about mag 6 (and
this is in light polluted West London). I took some 5M pixel shots of
Hercules and it even managed to detect M13.

Jeremy

It's lens aperture that counts with point-like star images not f/ratio

as in regular photography.

You can take good star pic [as you describe] but go much fainter by
using the full zoom [not digital zoom!] in 30s exposures. Co-adding
exposures via PaintShop Pro etc will increase penetration or by
'averaging' smooth grainy results at high 400-800 ISO rating.

However stars will trail in these telephoto settings with a static
camera so needs piggybacking on a driven mount like a Scotch Mount.

I get to mag 10 with my Minolta D7 at
http://home.freeuk.com/m.gavin/digsky2.htm
see also Terry Platt's astro Cybershots at
http://home.freeuk.com/m.gavin/digsky3.htm