Cosmic Cinders

Spending a night alone in a remote place can be an eerie experience, even more so if you are standing in the middle of an ancient volcano, like I did in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

 

Not only did my eyes become dark adapted, helping me to see the beauty of the night sky, but also my hearing seemed to be more acute. There were strange sounds all around me, which gave me the shivers. My mind started roaming while my camera slowly clicked away...

 

Standing on the barren cinders of an almost 400 year old volcanic eruption, I was shooting the sky full of stars, formed from the cinders of their own ancestors. I clearly saw our Milky Way's Great Rift, formed by dust from those long dead stars; the same dust that was the building material of our Sun, our Planet Earth, and even myself.

 

Here I was, cosmic cinders standing on, photographing, pondering, being mesmerized by the sight, and at the same time slightly frightened by the sound of cosmic cinders...

 

What a strangely beautiful universe!

 

EXIF

Canon EOS-R, astro-modified

Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 @ 15mm

IDAS NBZ filter

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

Sky:

Panorama of 7 panels, each a stack of 6x 60s @ ISO1600, unfiltered & 3x 150s @ ISO6400, filtered

Foreground:

Panorama of 7 panels, each a focus stack of 5x 2s @ ISO1600 during twilight.

Done