Sisyphus Arch

There are landmarks every landscape photographer wants to shoot, and Mobius Arch is one of them. The arch simply looks gorgeous with the ragged peaks of the Eastern Sierra in the backdrop.

 

A quick online search will reveal that most Milky Way nightscapes from Mobius Arch are captured from a lower and more westerly position than the famous daylight or sunrise shots. From this perspective, the arch still looks nice, but the view of the mountains is blocked by the surrounding rocks, making the composition less impressive. Unfortunately, the Milky Way core doesn't align with the Sierras behind the arch.

 

I shot Mobius Arch in this composition during previous visits but wasn't impressed by the results. That's why I tried to do things differently during my last visit in April 2022.

 

For this image, I captured Mobius Arch from its back side. From this position, the Milky Way bow perfectly aligns with the completely different but still nice-looking arch.

 

To my surprise, I haven't been able to find any images of Mobius Arch from this side, even though I was convinced that it has been shot from every possible angle thousands of times. If I really found a new perspective of this famous place, I entitle myself to give it a new, secondary name. For obvious reasons, I call it 'Sisyphus Arch'.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS R, astro-modified

Sigma 28mm ART f/1.4 @ f/2

IDAS NBZ filter

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

 

Sky:

Panorama of 8 panels, each a stack of 8x 45s @ ISO1600, unfiltered & 3x 105s @ ISO6400, filtered

 

Foreground:

Focus stacked panorama of 10 panels, each a stack of 5x 5s @ISO100, f/5.6 during twilight

Done