Quick Night Sky Photo Session from Rooftop

I had previously written about doing some practice shooting of the Milky Way from our backyard.  I had some trees and clouds in the way though so I was thinking that I should attempt another nighttime photo session from a different location...  from our rooftop!  This would allow me to get up toward a better height to see beyond most of the trees.

My photo of the Milky Way was looking pretty good last night but I wanted to get a bit more practice in before our trip and the weather was cooperating tonight so I ventured outside to the nighttime land of the skunks and bears.  The area reeked terribly of fresh skunk spray but I was safe up on the rooftop (yet another good reason to climb up onto the roof!).

I climbed up our ladder onto our rooftop...  used my cellphone to turn off all our outside lights...  then shot a few quick photos.  

First, I was pointed south...  this is where the galactic core of the Milky Way is partially visible from our neck of the woods on Earth.  From locations farther south, this galactic core is more easily visible and higher in the sky.  The two brightest blue stars in this image are Altair near the center of the frame and Vega up to the right in the frame...

Then I pointed my camera toward the northern sky to capture the Milky Way (the galaxy where we reside, by the way) looking in the opposite direction.  This part of the Milky Way isn't as bright as in the southern sky but I was able to see the Milky Way arcing overhead from the south, over my head, and to the north even with my naked eyes after they adapted to the darkness.  This northern part of the sky is filled with galaxies and nebulae...

This image below is a crop of the above image looking to the northern sky.  In the center of this crop is our closest neighbor, Andromeda Galaxy, about 2.5 million lightyears away...  equivalent to around 15 quintillion miles!  I'm actually kind of surprised that I was able to capture this galaxy so distinctly using this ultra wide angle lens!  

And lastly, I then pointed my camera directly over my head to capture the part of the Milky Way that was visible looking directly upward.  

These settings seemed to work just fine.  I was shooting at a high sensitivity of ISO 5000, my lens was wide open at f/4 and I exposed each image for 20 seconds.  I have a better understanding of how to judge manual focus using this camera now as well.  I really didn't need to mess around with that at all.  I set it and forgot about it.

It was a very short photo session but it was very productive and fruitful!