Dusty

Last week I spent an evening in Joshua Tree National Park. Dark night began at 6 p.m., so I had plenty of time to capture my foreground images and the winter Milky Way with Orion before the rising Moon ended the darkness at 11:30 p.m.

 

As I explored the area in the afternoon, I realized that the composition at my planned location did not align with the sky. While looking for a new location, I remembered that I had photographed the spring Milky Way at the spot in this image, which meant that rising Orion would align similarly.

 

The location did not disappoint, and neither did the winter Milky Way. The resulting panorama covers a huge area of the night sky with dozens of deep space targets, from NGC 7822, the Question Mark Nebula, and the Andromeda Galaxy at the top of the frame to the Rosette and Cone Nebula peeking through the rocks on the horizon. For me, however, the incredible amount of cosmic dust in this sky region is even more interesting than the well-known red hydrogen emission nebulae. The reddish-brown molecular clouds that fill the sky will eventually collapse and give birth to new stars. They are the building blocks of future solar systems that may become home to life forms that contemplate the universe when humanity is long gone...

 

EXIF

Canon EOS-R, astro-modified by EOS 4Astro

Sigma 28mm f/1.4 ART

IDAS NBZ filter

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

 

Sky:

Panorama of 4 panels, each a stack of 7x 45s @ ISO1600, unfiltered & 5x 105s @ ISO6400, filtered

 

Foreground:

Focus stack of 5 stacks of 5x 60s @ ISO3200

Done