View allAll Photos Tagged Moonless
Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.
In this vast landscape where chill south winds play,
where long nights hoarsen the shrill weather-vane,
it opens wide its raven’s wings, my soul,
freer than in times of mild renewal.
Nothing’s sweeter to my heart, full of sorrows,
on which the hoar-frost fell in some past time,
O pallid seasons, queens of our clime,
than the changeless look of your pale shadows,
- except, two by two, to lay our grief to rest
in some moonless night, on a perilous bed.
Charles Baudelaire
Finished up the 12 panel mosaic.
LUM-15x120sec/each panel
(6hrs.)
QHY23M & 11"Celestron Hyperstar(F/2)
RGB-17x1200sec,, 3 panel mosaic
(5hr. 40min)
QHY10 OSC & AstroTech AT65EDQ
3 panel mosaic (RGB color) added to 12 panel Luminance mosaic
Images acquired with APT(AstroPhotography Tool) and Nebulosity4. Pre-Processed with PixInsight. Post Processing with PS CS6 and PI
Located in the constellation of Andromeda(hence the name :) )this large spiral galaxy is 2.5 million light years away. It can be seen with the naked eye on moonless nights from even moderately light polluted skies. It has been recently estimated to contain nearly 1 trillion stars
There is nothing quite like watching the Milky Way rise on a moonless night. Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante has some of the darkest and clearest skies you’ll ever find. I took this short timelapse during our Grand Staircase and Beyond Workshop last year. While this timelapse was going, we were busy taking Milky Way panos over the arch. I have so much fun teaching night photography!
Due to a late cancellation, we now have one spot open on this workshop! If you are an intrepid photographer who wants to learn more about night photography, you will love this workshop! Learn more here:
Nestled in the heart of nature, Evergarden Equestrian Community offers a unique lifestyle centered around the love of horses and the great outdoors. Experience the beauty of all four seasons in a charming small-town atmosphere, where country living meets equestrian passion. Enjoy scenic drives along our winding roads with rezz zones for taking cars or bikes on leisurely drives. Our community is open for all to enjoy, and we warmly welcome bloggers and photographers to capture its beauty.
🍎Video Credit: Bin Catnap
🍎Landscape work: Moonless Designs
🍎Barn Links
Landmark: Click to Visit Evergarden!
Discord: discord.gg/evergarden
It was a moonless night so I decided to test out the low light capabilities of the D700. From what I read the D700/D3 has the lowest high ISO noise of any camera available and I was not disappointed in it's performance! I have even noticed lower noise at ISO 200 when really stretching the image such as doing HDR. Thank you Nikon!
This is a view of the Milky Way and Grand Teton over Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park. The exposure is 30 sec. at f2.8 and ISO 6400. The sky glow to the left (south) is from Jackson Hole and to the right is from Driggs, Idaho on the other side of the Tetons.
View the entire Low Light Photography Set
View the entire Tetons - East and West Set
View my - Most Interesting according to Flickr
Check out this breathtaking dual-residence project we recently completed in a peaceful mountain retreat. It’s surrounded by beautiful woodlands and tranquil spots, featuring hidden hangouts and pure serenity. Bringing this vision to life was an absolute delight! 💚
Stay tuned—we’ll be welcoming new clients soon!
This stunning photo was captured by the talented blogger, landscaper, and decorator Aurila!
Press L & F11 for best Lightbox View
Caption: The Racetrack playa and its moving rocks phenomenon draws travelers and photographers from all over the world. On a clear, moonless night, the mily way aligns with one of the trails left behind by the strange and unusual moving rocks.
About the image: While driving up to the Racetrack in Death Valley, a 27 mile gravel road with washboards a-plenty and many recent wash outs, I had the audacity to ask myself "is it worth it?". I had been there before, but the road was a fair bit worse this time through. When I arrived, there were half a dozen rental jeeps with a horde of about 20 photographers. From a distance, I could see that some of the playa's moving rocks, the main reason for subjecting myself and my vehicle to the drive, each had several people / tripods hovering around them.
I almost turned around and left.
I waited in my truck. And to my surprise, they all started leaving before sunset. I hurried out and photographed sunset. And by nightfall, I had the playa to myself. Under a moonless sky, the silence was deafening. Love it!
Nikon D800E
Nikkor 14-24mm @ 14mm
1 exposure at twilight: f16, ISO 400, 4 minutes
1 exposure for milky way: f2.8, ISO 6400, 25 seconds
(dinner back at my truck in between)
Keep an eye (and lens) out for the Perseid meteor shower this weekend. This is one of the most reliable displays of shooting stars - with 70 meteors per hour visible under dark skies far from the city light pollution.
This is my Perseid meteor shower image from 2016 - taken from Glen Allen, Virginia.
"By day seek the heights of the sun
And by midnight its abode in hell,
Where we are drunk upon the blood-vine
That spills from the grape vine
Of old Dionysus well
I behold self in the black of the moonless night,
Another death, another doom to foretell!
To old Baphomet
I proffer this life
Shedding blood and a dark soul to sell!
Misrule!
Misrule!
Oh, how wise is the fool
Of empty spaces
Barren places
The Devil's illumination
Misrule!
Misrule!
Oh how wise is the fool
Of empty spaces
Desolation
The Devil's exaltation
By Night we seek the sun in its nadir
And by day its glorious heights
As we glut upon the sacrament
Offered up by self-interment
Within the intellect of Old Night
I beseech the Other, my reflection,
My brother, another life,
Won through strife and the toll of Death's bell !
Before Persephone I ground all dismay
And make a paradise of the grandeur of hell !
Misrule!
Misrule!
Oh, how wise is the fool
Of empty spaces
Barren places
The Devil's illumination
Misrule!
Misrule!
Oh, how wise is the fool
Of empty spaces
Desolation
The Devil's Exaltation
Towards the gate of the Zeroth
Thrust imagination's divine key
Like the spear of Saint Longinus
To pierce the body of his highness
And let his blood run endlessly free
To fall unto me! To fall unto me!
And now i shall know
And now I shall see
The All which revolves about the nail
Turns ever paradoxically!."
After spinning my wheels for 6 weeks I am still waiting for some clear moonless skies here in Ottawa. I have not been able to post even a single decent astro-image since mid-September and I'm going crazy. In desperation I dug up this old image from last year and reprocessed it just for fun. It's noisy and ugly and very wild... but that is very close to how I feel these days waiting for a clear night so it suits me well!
I don't know whether to say you about this image "enjoy" or "ignore!" LOL!
Nikon D5500, Nikon 300/f4 @ F5.2, ISO 3200, 360 x 30 seconds, Star Adventurer, APP, Photoshop, -30 Celsius wind chill.
Parkes, NSW, Australia. November 2017. 14 vertical frame panorama.
On the Telescope Road, near the iconic Parkes Radiotelescope. The night was dark and moonless and the kangaroos sounded alarmingly like a crowd I could not see marching across the fields.
A shot I have envisioned for awhile finally came together this weekend as a moonless (and mostly cloudless) night sky allowed for a spectacular viewing of the Milky Way.
www.erikjohnsonphotography.com
Follow on Facebook | Instagram
For prints or licensing, please contact me at erikjohnsonphoto@gmail.com
During my recent expedition to Utah, I visited Goblin Valley State Park - about a 90 minute drive from Moab - as part of a time-lapse workshop led by Ron Risman. It is very dark there (my sky quality meter said 21.92 - 21.95 and it maxes out at 22.00), is an International Dark Sky Designated Park, and access at night is limited to pre-arranged groups and campers who are staying in the park.
The main attraction for nightscape photographers seeking an interesting foreground for a starry sky image are the Goblins. These are hoodoo like structures left from eons of erosion, forming shapes that some liken to goblins - hence the name.
This photo is a panorama made by putting a camera on a perfectly level tripod (no sky tracker), and rotating the camera horizontally about it’s vertical axis with overlap between exposures. The images are then stitched together in software which overlays adjacent images aligning those areas with identical stars and foreground features. The goblins were lit with two very low level LED flood lights placed behind and on either side of the camera. The light from these LEDs was so faint it could not be seen with the dark-adapted eye, but provided a useful exposure to the camera.
Just a note on color. The color of the landscape is more like what it would be in daylight. At night, if one could see it, it would be bluer. The goblins appeared only as silhouettes against the sky. So this image is somewhat of an art form - not an exact scientific representation of colors but interesting for a photo. The sky did exhibit a lot of airglow, making it green and magenta in places that are normally black on a moonless night. This is common in photos made in dark places. In fact, there were waves of airglow regions marching across the sky clearly exhibited in the time-lapse I made with my second camera set up - this phenomenon is a form of gravity waves (not the astronomical kind) - another post for another day.
The details of the make up of the image are: Camera: Nikon D810 set to ISO 6400, Lens: Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art lens set to F1.8, exposures: 5 panels in portrait mode each having 1 exposure of 8 seconds (I actually made 5 exposures at each panel but have not stacked them as yet since one exposure turned out pretty good). The full resolution panorama when constructed is 13,827 X 7261 pixels, a 2.6 GB TIF file.
Green chemiluminescence of oxygen and the galaxy that we're in. Space weather is a bit like terrestrial weather, it varies from night to night, putting a unique signature on most night shots captured under dark sky conditions.
It's hard for me to imagine destroying the beauty of phenomenon such as green airglow by artificially darkening the sky to black, or dragging tint slider to purple, or the white balance slider to blue. Or creating a post-apocalyptic smoky brown look by setting the white balance to daylight (do you see any daylight here?). We know what aurora green looks like, what the wavelength of photon-emitting oxygen looks like.
Maybe oddly tinted night shots are "creative", i.e. "art"? If so, I don't see the creativity and skill in simply dragging a slider in an odd direction. Creativity might look more like Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans. For art, shouldn't the influence of the artist be visible and intentional, not manifest itself to look exactly like a knowledge or skills deficit? Show us pink and we'll know that you meant "art", that your result is not simply a misadjusted slider. Art is still objective; I'm not required to like someone's version of it.
None of this is to say that those colors don't or can't exist at night. Purple is common if you shoot in twilight, in the evening before full darkness (the end of astronomical twilight). Particularly in the morning, after astronomical twilight, the purple creeping into my shots annoys me in my own photography, because it means that my night photography has ended, and any compositions that I didn't get to will be tainted. And the purple directly wipes out the green; I can no longer capture or show what was there. Sometimes it takes quite a while to get the composition, capture technique, and any subtle lighting you might want to add just right, and you miss the time deadline by a couple of minutes. It's aggravating. You may not have the right conditions, you certainly won't have those conditions, on the next night. You probably have other shooting objectives and may not be in the same area on the next night. So it may be years before you get to try to repeat and capture what you had intended. That's sad.
A different shade of dark purple can come from chemiluminescence of nitrogen, as seen during an aurora borealis display. Unless you're shooting aurora, that purple is much lower energy, difficult to capture or see during green airglow displays. It's darker, definitely not "tint slider purple". One way to calibrate what you should or shouldn't be seeing with airglow is to watch a lot of time-lapse videos captured from the ISS. Airglow is mostly green, in rare cases a higher altitude and lower energy red, and in cases rarer still a tannish orange color, which can be difficult to distinguish from skyglow light pollution striking smoke or clouds.
Blue can come from a crescent moon, it becomes noticeable as a crescent becomes more full, dominant and more like a moonlit sky by around 25%. A moon about to rise or having recently set can have a similar effect about 20 to 30 minutes from its rise/set time, depending upon your horizon elevation. Fine. A tiny sliver of moonlight can help illuminate your landscape, but when it colors your sky, that's no longer dark sky night photography.
I prefer straight photography. No AI. No substituted sky, no faked reflection. No black, blue, or purple skies on a moonless night. No fake splotchy fog. A little dodging and burning is OK, a little contrast is fine, but nature is stunning as it exists, why mess that up?
My previous attempt at doing night photography at the Moulton Barns along Mormon Row in Grand Teton National Park was cut short by a herd of Buffalo in the area. I could hear them all around me but could not see them. Not wanting to be trampled by ghost buffalo coming out of the darkness I cut my losses and left.
The other night it was a different story. It was a beautiful moonless night and no snorting! This is a 30 sec., ISO 6400 image of the south Moulton Barn. I did some light painting of the barn by pointing the flashlight at my shirt and moving back and forth to spread out the light a bit. This resulted in much more even light painting than when I shinned the flashlight directly at the barn.
The sky glow above the barn is from Driggs, Idaho on the west side of the Tetons.
View the entire Low Light Photography Set
View the entire Tetons - East and West Set
View my - Most Interesting according to Flickr
A few weeks ago I woke up to this beautiful reclusive view. I would love to share the location but I also want to keep it a secret so it never becomes crowded. This place is an amazing world of geological history shown through the fragile layers exposed by erosion. The landscapes in this area are "other-worldly" and I can't wait to go back for another shoot, hopefully on a cloudless moonless night.
This picture is a series of 5 stitched portrait photos, combined in Photoshop.
Camera: Canon 6D
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 24mm (Pano)
Shutter: 1/40
Aperture: f/10
When summer turns to fall, leaves on our planet turn color, and sister planets of our solar systems take center-stage in the night sky.
After a wonderful sunset the other day at the Rocky Mountain National Park, Rishabh and I hung around the high perch of the Gore Range overlook at about 12000 feet for the night sky to come alive. The sky is usually crystal clear from such high elevation. However, light pollution from nearby Estes Park and distant Denver neighborhoods significantly diffuse the dark crispness near the horizon. On this particular evening, high clouds diffused out soon after sunset leaving only jets from the Denver airport to visually annoy me in the night canvas. After the astronomical sunset, Rishabh and I watched the milky way rise gloriously from its blue bath. From this elevation, its brightness was extraordinary. And then in the moonless darkness, we saw the autumnal assembly of our planets near the milky way.
To begin with, on the immediate west-northwest of the galactic center, Pluto and the ringed Saturn were close to each other near Sagittarius’ wings. Just north of the galactic center, the magnificent Jupiter could be easily spotted as a bright light. This luminous spot near the foggy center of the milky way appeared almost like a galactic lighthouse that could aid imaginary spaceships in their arduous inter-galactic journey. For most of 2019, Jupiter will remain perched within the constellation Ophiuchus – the serpent bearer. Mythology associates the snake bearer with the Greek healer god, Asclepius, who brought people back to life from the dead. In the northern hemisphere, as fall turns to winter, Ophiuchus – along with Jupiter and other planets – will switch over to the day sky, thereby remaining invisible. This was one of the last few opportunities in 2019 to catch the mighty Jupiter in Ophiuchus' cradle.
Tech Specs: Fujifilm X-T5, Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 @ f/4.0, exp 57x13s, iso 800, Astrotrac 320-AG, Post in PixInsight. Sky transparency 9 of 10. Bortle 5, moonless, Clear sky, breezy. Temperature 52F.
Comet's magnitude estimate at 4.3 with persistent faint anti-tail, and greenish tint when color calibrated in PixInsight. Was visible in binoculars with tail extending ~10 degrees. In this 7.5x5.0 deg image, the tail looks very uniform. The slighter bright right side of the tail maybe the ion tail superimposed on the dust tail.
Picture of the Day
M42 and NGC1975 in HDR from moonless evening ... 3h51m including core shots.
ASI 296 MC Pro
William Optics GTF81 F5.9
After 5 evenings of processing maybe I was able to find the final image that satisfies me ... I am very happy. Never done an HDR, and taming Pixinsight is not easy ...
Dömös is a Hungarian village in the Danube Bend (Dunakanyar) located 45 km north from Budapest. The Dunakanyar is often considered as one of the most beautiful part of river Danube where it flows between Börzsöny Mountain and Visegrád Mountain.
I often escape from the Capital and travel here for some recreational wild camping or simply for staring at the sky in a sleeping bag at the bank of the river.
The night of 28th March 2017 was moonless, cloudless and warm so I went here for taking this seven-hour-long all-sky photo, the longest one I've ever made.
2017.03.28-29.
Dömös, Hungary
Canon EOS 5D Mark II + Sigma EF 8/4.0
218 x 120sec, F4.5, ISO 1600
2nd place of Photo Nightscape Awards 2017, Nightscape category
A few weeks ago, I spent a few hours of a sunday night under a moonless and wide open and mostly dark sky...
Another moonless night where I had to light things with a flashlight. Also, this is a 30 second exposure from a swinging bridge (which was swinging.)
An awe-inspiring auroral display lights up the moonless skies above volcanic mountains, escarpments and glaciers streaming down from the more distant Vatnajokull icecap, near Brunnholl, Iceland.
This is a sort of intro to what I expect will be something of a series of aurora shots that Sky Matthews and I will likely post in the coming weeks or months from our recent photography trip to Iceland. We planned to be there a week in the hope that moments of clear skies would align with visible auroral activity for at least an hour or two on one night or another. What nature gifted us was far more than I'd dared hope to see.
We had a completely clear night, with no moonrise until shortly before dawn, on which the aurora first appeared in the northern skies before we'd even finished dinner, and from there it grew nearly to fill the heavens at times from horizon to horizon. Perhaps most spectacularly, it morphed in form throughout the night. Streaks and arches of glorious light closer to the northern horizon evolved into this luminescent ribbon dance weaving intricate patterns in every direction, and then the aurora steadied in the later hours well after midnight into great flowing rivers of light across the sky which in turn spun off smaller eddies of the most magnificent green with hints of red and purple.
Needless to say, we stayed up all night in utter amazement, shooting in six different locations across one hundred kilometers or so of Iceland, and watching this seemingly never-ending display in all its stunning forms (you'll get a glimpse in future posts of what I keep saying about the different ways the aurora presented throughout the night) until it was finally overwhelmed at last by dawn's light the next morning.
This was only my second-ever attempt at photographing the aurora, so there was a substantial learning curve, and much room for further improvement still if I'm ever lucky enough to see a display like this again one day, but I was nonetheless pleased to get some shots to share! Two things stood out in my mind when reflecting on photographing this awesome display: First, even with my 14-24 wide open, I could not hope to communicate the massive area of sky infused with these ever changing patterns of light; and, second, I cannot imagine any photograph, video or anything else giving more than the faintest hint of how much wonder, awe and reverence an aurora like this inspires when experienced in person.
Thanks for viewing!
Its more than a little unsettling stepping out onto the moor on a moonless night.
This is the kind of darkness, i don't get to experience too often. The wind was pretty wild too, pushing and bullying and harassing.
My eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness, and looking up i saw the huge swathe of stars that make up the milky way.
I saw the viaduct too, it's columns and arches loomed out of the darkness and blotted out the stars.
I took a number of shots, none of which i was happy with. I wasn't able to protect my camera adequately from the wind and i gave it up as a bad job.
Heading back to the safety of the car and i thought 'just one more'.. This was the result. The only shot i was happy with.
So I got myself an ND Filter, wanted to try out that "silky water" thing. Here's the first shot with it.
Being a guy I did the typical guy thing which would be to slap it on the camera and start shooting. There were no instructions in the box and being a guy I wouldn't have read them anyhow. It's a couple of pieces of glass in a metal frame. I'm definitely smarter than a couple of pieces of glass in a metal frame!
Well, I don't think it was a big enough violation to cancel my Man Card but it didn't go well at first. I cranked that filter down to ND32, put the camera in manual and hit the remote button. I figured 5 seconds should make things silky smooth and it certainly did. My first shot pretty much looked like www.flickr.com/photos/bigharv/'s latest submission to Flickr!
Ok, that didn't work so what next? Drop the Exposure, that'll darken things up! Nay, nay, that wasn't the ticket. It looked like I got a shot of a black cat on a moonless night in a dark alley.
Fiddled with the setting a bit more and finally came up with this shot. Came home, took a look at it and said "well, it's sorta silky" so here it is for your enjoyment!
This is the fountain in the pond at the park where I live in Tucson. Moving water is really a luxury here in Arizona so don't be expecting any waterfalls or beaches any time soon. This is what we've got so this is what I shot! Oh, I also learned that trees on a windy day wind up looking silky as well!
After coming home I did do a little research and learned that I should have increased the SHUTTER speed to get what I wanted. Now this doesn't make sense to me since it seems that Shutter Speed isn't much different than using a remote in Manual and keeping it open for a bit. Hopefully someone can tell me different!
Any experts out there I hope you've read this far and can offer up some suggestions on how to properly use this filter. The Internets have really let me down!
Struggling to get out right now. This is from a while back, beneath the Humber Bridge on a cold moonless evening. It was so dark I sat me iPhone on a fg rock to get focus and tripped over the wreath which I guess has washed up with the tide. Who knows...
Walking from the Point Reyes lighthouse back to my car on a moonless night I noticed that the waves breaking along the beach below emitted a faint blue glow. Of course I had to stop and take a picture.
This morning I was able to see the comet naked eye once I knew exactly where to look. It was brighter than M13 and I'd estimate its brightness as +5.4 magnitude. Viewed near Oracle, Arizona under Bortle 4, sky transparency 10/10, temperature 23F, RH 75%, no winds. Elevation 3575 feet. Coldest morning so far this winter!
Tech Specs: Nikon d7100, 180mm f/2.8 @ f/2.8, iso 2200, exp 30x105s, raw, cropped, PixInsight (new Comet Alignment routine that enables fixed comet and fixed stars). Comet's anti-tail is still obvious. The comet was moving 8.7 arcmins/hour or the moon's diameter in about 3.5 hours!
Looks like I will have great clear mornings for daily updates this week. The comet should be a more obvious naked eye object in dark moonless skies for the next two weeks. The near full moon sets 30 minutes before twilight interferes on 2 Feb. The comet will be ~20 degrees above the northeast horizon on that date.
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air...
Lord Byron
Canon5d2+samyang24mm f2,0 iso2000 20s - 7shots pano
Clear moonless mid-october night, faint airglow over the horizon and clear skies for the whole night long.....
We were lucky enough to catch a fantastic display of the northern lights whilst staying in Invergloy for an Autumn break. The evening was moonless and it should have been totally dark by the loch side but the shores and landscape were lit up, such was the strength of this display. When the display subsided later in the evening we realized just how much we had been able to do using the light of the aurora. The lights from Inverness can be seen to the north in the far distance.
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air
- From Darkness By Lord Byron
In these dark days, the Hereios huddle together and take comfort in numbers. Pictures of numbers, that is. The number 13, specifically.
Put some lucky light into that 365. Join We’re Here!
1:30am on a clear moonless night. A small lake in central Virginia reflects the countless stars in this dream-like nightscape.
Another shot from 2014.
Our first night in Spitzkoppe in Namibia, one of the world's most under-populated countries. The nearest town to our campsite was 60kms away and the level of light pollution was zero. The details on the granite rocks are purely from starlight - it was a completely moonless, cloudless night.
Can't wait to get back!
EXIF: 14mm; f/2.8; 30 secs; ISO1600
(Panel of 4 shots, stitched together using Microsoft ICE)
Bioluminescent phytoplankton glowing in the surf on a moonless night, Second Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington, USA.
Single exposure. No blending.
This is a copyrighted image with all rights reserved. Please don't use this image on websites, blogs, facebook, or other media without my explicit permission. I will stop posting again if these images turn up in places I did not allow them to. See profile page for information on prints and licensing.
Bản quyền hình ảnh. Không sử dụng mà không được phép.
Авторское изображение. Не используйте без разрешения.
受版权保护的图像。未经许可，请勿使用。
Wirral
A nice calm moonless night nearly 2 hours after sunset. I was surprised how dark the boardwalk was and just about managed a couple of shots before the inevitable passing cyclist. I have to admit there is something special about riding this route at night, the noise of the invisible birds and the rumble of the boardwalk :)
This is my first comet ever - the first one I've seen and the first one I've photographed and it's kind of exciting!
I know that I've come pretty late to the comet party - dozens have been posted already in various forums, but I finally got my first clear moonless sky opportunity last night. Better late than never!
Anyways, I'm still pretty unfamiliar with my new mount and I couldn't get the guiding system working, so this image was done unguided with short 60-second exposures to keep the stars round. Not the greatest, but better than no comet at all. I'll be ready for the next one.
Technical info:
Camera: Nikon D5500 unmodified
Lens: Nikon as-f 300/f4 ED IF
Exposure: 60 x 1-minute = 1 hour integration time
Aperture: 5.2 with aperture mask using step-down rings
ISO: 1600
No calibration frames
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Processed in Pixinisght 1.8 and Photoshop CS5
This was taken the night before my last post at Palouse Falls State Park. Arrived around 2AM with a clear dark skies, and I couldn't help myself and started shooting until morning. It was a moonless night with minimal light into Palouse Canyon. So I did 2 different exposures and blended them together in PS.
I did try to head up to the higher ground where you can see the Palouse River in the canyon and capture it from there. But after heading up there with absolutely NO visibilities over the edge, think that it wasn't a smart thing to do and head back down. Finally settle with this, and can't recall there's a milkyway shot done from here! Please correct me if I'm wrong!! :)
Thanks for your visit!
Prints available: bun-lee.artistwebsites.com/featured/galaxy-above-bun-lee....
The arc of the Milky Way spans the Gates of the Valley in Yosemite National Park. El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall frame Yosemite Valley on a moonless night. The only illumination on the valley is from starlight and airglow.
I have done this particular shot twice before, but have never been satisfied with the results; primarily with the quality and detail in the foreground. This time, I returned with my Sony A7S to try to do it better. I like this version a lot more
Gory Details:
The Sky portion of this composite is a single-row panorama using higher ISO and shorter shutter duration to capture the stars as pinpoints rather than as streaks.
The foreground is a two-row panorama using a longer shutter duration to pull out detail from the foreground that is only lit by starlight and airglow.
Both panoramas were stitched using the new Merge function in Lightroom CC. I have to admit, I am very impressed with this added feature. The Milky Way portion was then composited with the foreground portion in Photoshop.
Milky Way: Sony A7S, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 at f/2, 15s, ISO6400, 15 images combined into a pano (I overlap a LOT).
Foreground: Sony A7S, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 at f/2, 120s, ISO3200, 30 images (2 rows) combined into a pano
Since it was a relatively warm night (60s), I noticed significant pixel color noise on the 2 minute foreground images. It cleaned up nicely with LENR, but I did not want to wait the extra 2 minutes per exposure that LENR takes. To be able to clean up the images in post processing, I took a couple of Dark Frames (same settings but with lens cap on) before I packed up and went home. In order to reduce the fixed color noise on each image, I subtracting the dark frames from each of the foreground exposures in Photoshop. Time consuming, but very worth it.
The toughest part of doing this image was taking foreground images with no car lights in them! Despite being after 1AM, it was difficult to get 2 minute exposures that didn’t have some car driving thru. Since sometimes the car would come by on Southside Drive and sometimes on Northside Drive, I was able to combine two “ruined” images into one image with no cars by blending in Photoshop.
Needless to say, between capture and post-processing, this has been one of my most difficult images.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ipUBRS75pw
Dark and moonless night
Has never felt so right
An empty mirror only shows what's left inside
Lost in the city street
Electric tapestry
The neon becons me beyond its ghostly light
No longer I pretend
The staircase I decend
Will lead me anywhere but my unscripted end
My heart and hands collide
The gun lays at my side
Too late to turn back
Only fates left to decide
Magnum bullets
Settling the score
Magnum bullets
Kicking down the door
Back up the stairs again
I am a different man
A broken mirror only shows as best it can
Running in shoes that shine
With blood that isn't mine
A stinging trophy
Of the battles I've survived
No longer I defend
The choices I pretend
Could make amends that heal the loss of precious time
My conscience paralyzed
Against the rising tide
Of haunting memories that drown a wasted life
Magnum bullets
Always wanting more
Magnum bullets
Closing every door
I arrived at the highway bridge over the Rio Grande a little after midnight and waited around until I was satisfied with the Milky Way being nice and vertical over the river, about another hour.
It was not a pleasant location to hang out in, despite the view. The shoulder on the bridge enabled me to be on it at all, but the highway traffic was going right behind me. Annoyingly, even after midnight there was a surprising number of big trucks coming down from Los Alamos. Some made an effort to change to the left lane when they saw my headlamp, but some didn't and it was a hair-raising experience having them barrel past me at high speeds just a few feet away.
On my way back off the bridge I became aware of all the big dents in the guard rail, so I was happy to get out of there....
Despite all that, it is a beautiful scene and the waning gibbous moon provided ample illumination of the landscape. The trade-off is a washed-out Milky Way though.
Last year I took this shot on a moonless night, but didn't like the outcome because the landscape was pitch black and therefore became very noisy in post processing when trying to brighten it.
Because of the traffic, I swore then never to come back in the pitch black of night. Now I vowed never to come back at all.
Made from 16 light frames with 16 dark frames by Starry Landscape Stacker 1.8.0. Algorithm: Mean Min Hor Noise