Farewell to the Core

As the Milky Way core season is quickly drawing to an end, I sized the opportunity of bidding it my farewell during one of the rare clear nights last week.

 

To find a low horizon, I had to shoot from the top of a mountain. I decided to spend the night on Mt. Säntis in eastern Switzerland. Säntis der Berg is easily accessible by the cable car and has the very nice mountain guesthouse altersaentis.ch where I set up quarters and got treated with an excellent meal to prepare myself for the freezingly cold night to come.

 

Mt. Säntis offers nice views over the Toggenburg Valley and the distinctive peaks of the Churfirsten range, which you may know form earlier work of mine.

 

The conditions were extremely breezy and the exposed location at 2500m a.m.s.l. didn't help either. I shielded my rig with my body to avoid the worst shaking, but still had to shoot wider than planned.

 

To make the best of the situation, I captured a vertical panorama that extends all the way up to the zenith, were the colorful Cygnus region is now riding in all its glory at nightfall.

 

Unfortunately, social media is not made for posting such vertical panoramas and I had to find a creative solution to make it avaliable in acceptable resolution. I hope you like it anyway.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS R, astro-modified

Sigma 28mm f/1.4 @ f/2.8

IDAS NBZ filter

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

Sky:

Vertical panorama of 5 panels, each a stack of 15x 30s @ ISO800 & 5x 90s ISO3200

Foreground:

Stack of 5x 25s @ ISO400 during astronomical twilight

Done