Feeling Home

You may have seen some of my images from the Kreuzberge in the Alpstein Mountains. After capturing my planned compositions, the Milky Way core had set and I was ready to call it a night.

 

Before hittig the mat in my tent, I looked at the scene around and glorious sky above me. It was too dark to actually see more than a few peaks of my homeland, but my eyes followed the luminous band with millions of stars that forms our galactic home. The summer triangle was riding high above me and Cygnus was hugging the zenith. King Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia were ruling the northern sky, while I was just barely able to see her beautiful daughter Andromeda high in the east. Lowering my eyes to the eastern horizon, I saw the Pleiades rising, a clear sign that summer was ending soon.

 

Looking at the marvel above and around me, I felt totally at home me and I decided that the tent had to wait. Determined to capture the moment, I started shooting this huge panorama. In the end, it cost me almost 3 hours of sleep, but it was worth every minute.

 

The real ordeal started in post processing. I was able to stitch the sky, as a 360° spherical panorama, but how on earth can you project that over a foreground without squashing the uppermost stars into unrecognizable streaks? I was finally able to get a decent result by applying all my tricks and inventing a few new ones. The price I had to pay, was loosing about 20° along the edge of the image, making this 'only' a 340° panorama.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

 

Prints available: ralf-rohner.pixels.com

EXIF

Canon EOS 6D astro modified

Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 @ 15mm

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

 

Sky:

20 panels, each a stack of 6 x 45s @ ISO1600

Foreground:

12 panels, each a stack of 6 x 45s @ ISO1600

Done