The Center of the Milky Way from Mount Pinos - 2019-07-27
June and July 2019 provided some wonderful views of the Milky Way from dark sky sites. Jupiter (in the constellation Ophiuchus) flanked the bright center of our galaxy on the west, and Saturn (in Sagittarius) was to its east. Even the small amount of light pollution from the Los Angeles area is mostly blocked by trees in this view. A close inspection will show that all four bright emission nebulae - M8, M20, M17, and M16 - are all visible in this view. They are joined by numerous globular star clusters and open star clusters, along with the rich fields of interstellar dust that reside between our location and the center of our Milky Way.
The sky is a stack of 11 exposures between 140 s and 180 s at ISO 1600 with a Nikon D80. The camera was mouned on an Omegon Mintrack LX2. The trees are mostly from a single exposure, but I built the composite to keep as much sky detail as possible. Thus, some of the trees are a lie. All images were shot with an 18.0mm - 135.0 mm lens at a focal length of 18.0 mm and at f/3.5. Registration, stacking, and initial processing in PixInsight; compositing and final touches in PS CS 5.1.
The Center of the Milky Way from Mount Pinos - 2019-07-27
June and July 2019 provided some wonderful views of the Milky Way from dark sky sites. Jupiter (in the constellation Ophiuchus) flanked the bright center of our galaxy on the west, and Saturn (in Sagittarius) was to its east. Even the small amount of light pollution from the Los Angeles area is mostly blocked by trees in this view. A close inspection will show that all four bright emission nebulae - M8, M20, M17, and M16 - are all visible in this view. They are joined by numerous globular star clusters and open star clusters, along with the rich fields of interstellar dust that reside between our location and the center of our Milky Way.
The sky is a stack of 11 exposures between 140 s and 180 s at ISO 1600 with a Nikon D80. The camera was mouned on an Omegon Mintrack LX2. The trees are mostly from a single exposure, but I built the composite to keep as much sky detail as possible. Thus, some of the trees are a lie. All images were shot with an 18.0mm - 135.0 mm lens at a focal length of 18.0 mm and at f/3.5. Registration, stacking, and initial processing in PixInsight; compositing and final touches in PS CS 5.1.