The Perfect Mirror [Explored]

The night at this beautiful lake in the Swiss Alps had started cloudy and windy, but by 1 a.m. the clouds were gone and the wind had died down completely. Within half an hour, the choppy and opaque surface of the lake transformed into a perfect mirror.

 

I was able to see a lot of Milky Way detail in the calm water and decided that it was one of the rare occasions where it was worth to track the reflection.

 

The result is pinpoint stars in the water and several deep space objects, like the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Trifid Nebula (M20), the Omega Nebula (M17) and the Eagle Nebula (M16) are not only visible in the sky, but also in the reflection. The open star clusters M23 and Butterfly Cluster (M6) are discernable as well and even the region around Antares is showing a hint of color.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS 6D, astro modified

Samyang 24mm f/2.8

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

Foreground:

2 panel panorama, each a stack of 5 x 50s @ ISO6400

Sky:

Stack of 6 x 50s @ ISO1600, tracked

Reflection:

Single exposure of 30s @ ISO6400, tracked

Done