Our entries
Our entries in the Shoot the Stars Contest were all taken with a consumer Canon Powershot A540 sitting on a tripod just outside Yarker Ontario. It was using the modified CHDK software to lengthen the normal maximum exposure of 15 seconds up to 64 seconds.
Full Moon Rising —->
The canon camera could not do deep/dark sky imagery very well at all. It still turns out to be quite noisy. So instead of trying to force the camera into doing images that it was poor at, we went with the brighter composition of the full moon rising beside an illuminated maple tree just after sunset.
<---- Milky Way over Yarker
Again we composed this to add some nice ground based leafless trees
bracketing the milky way. There were 5 shots taken and this was the only one without airplane trails. The 64 second exposure, even with a relatively wide angle lens, does cause star trails, especially this close to the ecliptic.
Sagittarius over Yarker —->
This was the lightest deep sky image we could attempt of Sagittarius almost due south but with a lot of sky glow from the rising moon.
Again ground horizon is in the shot, giving a reference point and some unintended street light lighting in the right corner.