Sensor over heating

I was taking shots of the milky way last night, about 20 at 30Sec, F5.0, Digital Noise reduction on, manual focus, Long exposure noise on and i guesse got hot since I did not give the camera breather and it litelary foze on me and picture was just colored spots

Is this normal?

What should I do next time ?

Thank You

Normal? Hard to say. Where are you, how warm was it outside, how many shots before it stopped working, shooting JPEG or RAW, froze how? All information that would help. If it happened 20 shots in, as it would seem you're saying, that's 10 minutes of exposure time, which means 20 minutes with Long Exp NR on. That's short of the limit Nikon puts on their video recording, which is shortened to prevent sensor overheating, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't overheat sooner in a particularly warm, or extremely cold environment.

Nick1 said:

I was taking shots of the milky way last night, about 20 at 30Sec, F5.0, Digital Noise reduction on, manual focus, Long exposure noise on and i guesse got hot since I did not give the camera breather and it litelary foze on me and picture was just colored spots

Is this normal?

What should I do next time ?

Thank You

Click to expand...

That sensors heat up is a known fact. How much depends on
. Ambient temperature
. Length of exposure
. Heat transfer capacity of the body

In your case it could have happened. To reduce the load
. Shoot in RAW
. Switch noise reduction off
. Long exposure noise off
. Switch the display off
The reason is that all these functions load the CPU and increase the temperature. The noise reduction functions can be implemented in post processing. A better method is to take a "dark frame" after each shot - expose for the same time with lense cap on. Then use software to subtract the dark frame from the image frame.

The lower the sensor temperature the lower the noise. In Astronomy circles, noise is reduced by cooling the camera. It can be as simple as having a fan blowing air on the body to elaborate encasing of the body in a cooler. Astronomy cameras have provision for further cooling using electricity (peltier cooling Thermoelectric effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), or if the camera is designed for it cooling by liquid Nitrogen.