Head to Head with the Galaxy

It took me a while to locate the famous ram sculptures in Borrego Springs and when I finally found them, I realized I had passed them several times on the nearby road.

 

In the afternoon I scouted the area and used the VR mode in the PhotoPills app to check the exact orientation of the Milky Way in relation to the sculptures made by Sculpture Artist Ricardo Breceda. As I had just one night in Borrego Springs with so many great subjects for nightscapes, I developed precise shooting schedule. It worked perfectly and I was able to shoot 8 sculptures at different locations in a single night. I am pretty happy with that achievement, considering I had just 2:08 hours between moonset and astronomical dawn and had to setup my tracker and low level lighting at every site.

 

Prints available: ralf-rohner.pixels.com

 

EXIF

Canon EOS 6D astro modified

Samyang 24mm f/1.4

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

Low Level Lighting

 

Sky

Stack of 6 x 30x 30s @ISO1600 f/2.0, tracked

Foreground

Stack of 5 x 30s @ISO1600 f/2.0

Done