This was the first of 4 nights of Milky Way photography in 5 nights that I did this week. I started in Arches National Park as I worked my way back to California. Since I had just captured the Milky Way a month earlier at Balanced Rock and the The Windows area, I was looking for something different, and this is an area just a bit before Balanced Rock. The Road is on the other side of this small hill and rock area, I picked it since I could block the car traffic with the hill. The head lights would sidelight the rocks, but I knew that. My main concern was I didn't want headlights to hit the cameras while they were photographing.
Moab is so bright. It has grown triple in brightness it seems from just 4 or 5 years ago. I initially was going to use an image in the timelapse sequence where the core of the Milky Way lines up perfectly with the Moab Glow, but chose this one in the end because it's close and there is the meteor.
This is a single image, except for the very end of the tail of the comet, which was in the previous frame. I layer masked that in so that the meteor would be complete. There is no moon. The sky (outside of Moab) is so dark there, the stars really light up the ground so well.
25 sec
ISO 3200
f2
Sigma 14mm f1.8
Nikon D850
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. I will have the timelapse of this night up later today.
PSS. For those curious, my initial goal was 7 straight nights of the Milky Way. But after shooting all night in Arches, the next day the whole west coast was forecast to have clouds that night, so I had to skip a night. I was then going to do 5 straight nights of the Milky Way, starting in Death Valley. And I had done Death Valley, Mono Lake, and then the Alabama Hills. As I wrapped up Wednesday morning from the Alabama Hills, I got the notice that the real Astro Camera I had ordered (for my Deep Space Astro) was going to be delivered to my house in SoCal. The moon was getting to be too bright and making my timelapses a bit harder to do, so that was all the excuse I needed to cut the trip off at that point. But still 4 Milky Ways in 5 nights, all in different locations I think was pretty cool.
Moab is so bright. It has grown triple in brightness it seems from just 4 or 5 years ago. I initially was going to use an image in the timelapse sequence where the core of the Milky Way lines up perfectly with the Moab Glow, but chose this one in the end because it's close and there is the meteor.
This is a single image, except for the very end of the tail of the comet, which was in the previous frame. I layer masked that in so that the meteor would be complete. There is no moon. The sky (outside of Moab) is so dark there, the stars really light up the ground so well.
25 sec
ISO 3200
f2
Sigma 14mm f1.8
Nikon D850
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. I will have the timelapse of this night up later today.
PSS. For those curious, my initial goal was 7 straight nights of the Milky Way. But after shooting all night in Arches, the next day the whole west coast was forecast to have clouds that night, so I had to skip a night. I was then going to do 5 straight nights of the Milky Way, starting in Death Valley. And I had done Death Valley, Mono Lake, and then the Alabama Hills. As I wrapped up Wednesday morning from the Alabama Hills, I got the notice that the real Astro Camera I had ordered (for my Deep Space Astro) was going to be delivered to my house in SoCal. The moon was getting to be too bright and making my timelapses a bit harder to do, so that was all the excuse I needed to cut the trip off at that point. But still 4 Milky Ways in 5 nights, all in different locations I think was pretty cool.
