Warp Speed

On an exceptionally calm night, while overflying the Austrian Alps at 36'000 feet, I was able to capture the Milky Way in the constellation Aquila. The bright star in the middle is Altair and Vega in the constellation Lyra can be seen in the upper right corner.

 

The clouds covering the mountains were lit by light pollution from below. On the right hand side, the bright lights of Munich are lighting the night and on the orange glow on the left side is produced by the cities in the Po Plain of northern Italy.

 

This is my first successful stack of a nightscape taken from an airplane. Due to the exceptionally smooth flight conditions, almost 50% of my shots got acceptably sharp stars, enabling me to stack them and thus lowering the noise in the image. For the foreground I was able to use more frames, giving a better impression of speed.

 

Canon EOS 6D

Samyang 24mm f/1.4

 

Sky:

4 x 5s @ ISO 6400 stacked with Fitswork

 

Foreground:

8 x 5s @ ISO 6400 stacked in PS

 

Thanks for all your thoughts and faves. They are highly appreciated.

 

Done