Whole-sky photos - the Milky Way
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The photos on this page were taken with a 15mm fish-eye lens. That covers 180 degrees on each diagonal, thereby showing nearly all of the sky*. I used a motorised mount (HEQ5) and simply averaged the images together using GRIP.
* More detail: on a full-frame 35mm camera, which my EOS 5D MkII is, the specified field of view of the lens is 141°.9 x 91°.5 = 3.96 steradians = 63% of the full hemisphere of the sky.
From a rural site
Canon EOS 5DMkII 15mm fisheye f/4.0 31x30s ISO 6400 2010-09-09 20:40:14-20:58:57 UT
From Rookhope 54.8
Taken from the village of Rookhope in the North Pennines, with little or no light pollution. Taken in early September, the photo spans from Perseus & Cassiopeia (top left, looking NE) and to Sagittarius (bottom right, due south). Sagittarius is the direction to the centre of the galaxy but that is well obscured by dust, as can be seen.
This photograph clearly shows our edge-on view of the disc of the galaxy in which we live and the dark clouds of interstellar dust that obscure much of it. Compare it with photos of other galaxies that are believed to be similar to ours:
Similar view from suburban site
From my usual light-polluted site, I tried to take a similar photo of the Milky Way. I had to use shorter exposures because 30 seconds (as used above) would just result in a completely fogged image. I was also limited by terrestrial clouds that came across part way through the exposure. Here is the result, for comparison with the previous image:
Canon EOS 5DMkII 15mm fisheye f/2.8 34x10s ISO 1600 2010-08-09 22:31:14-22:40:08 UT
From Whitley Bay 55.1
The central bright star is Vega and then you can see the cross of Cygnus to the left of that. The milky way is hardly visible though.
Perseid meteor
A fish-eye lens could be useful for photographing meteors, because it covers so much of the sky. In fact the last photo was taken a few days before the maximum of the Perseid shower and I did manage to capture one. This is a cropped portion of the next frame after the above:
Canon EOS 5DMkII 15mm fisheye f/2.8 10s ISO 1600 2010-08-09 22:40:23 UT
From Whitley Bay 55.1
The curve of the trail is due to the fish-eye lens. That is the trade-off: huge coverage but with barrel distortion. The central star here is Altair. The constellations of Delphinus and Sagitta can be seen above that. The orange blur at the top is a terrestrial cloud moving quickly across.
From the suburban site in March
Canon EOS 5DMkII 15mm fisheye f/2.8 100x10s ISO 800 2010-03-01 19:07:19-19:33:00 UT
From Whitley Bay 55.1
That shows almost the whole sky as seen from latitude 55°N, early evening at the beginning of March. Constellations from Orion to Ursa Major and Cassiopeia can all be seen. The bright spot left of Gemini is Mars. You can also see how the light pollution is worst to the south for me (on the northern edge of Tyneside). Despite that, the Milky Way can be seen in places. The photo shows far more than can be seen with the naked eye.