Midnight Mystery

[JimFox]

This was from a month ago up at Dallas Divide in SW Colorado. It's getting late in the Milky Way season with the Milky Way being more vertical then horizontal, which to me is my least favorite position for it. In this case with the partly cloudy sky and liked how they interacted with the Milky Way. I did have to deal with the moon too, but as it was setting everything else fell into place. That bright orange cloud on the horizon only lit up with that for a while, and it was as the moon was setting so I was thinking that the moon would be lighting up and coloring it.

I would have preferred to have the San Juan range centered of course, but the sky dictated this angle so I went with it.

This is a single image at ISO 1600

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[Ben Egbert]

The clouds form a sort of cross with the Milky Way. I really like the color on the clouds

 

[AlanLichty]

Neat to get cloud colors from a moonset like this. The moon setting off to the right of center and the San Juans off to the left actually help balance the scene. I like the result. Nice work.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I think this is great, Jim.

 

[JimFox]

The clouds form a sort of cross with the Milky Way. I really like the color on the clouds

Thanks so much Ben. You are right, they do kind of form a cross.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Looks great to me. Did you do take more to also do a pano? More of the peaks would be nice, even if they aren't centered.

 

[Alisa]

This is so beautiful Jim!

 

[JimFox]

Looks great to me. Did you do take more to also do a pano? More of the peaks would be nice, even if they aren't centered.

Thanks Jim. No, I didn't take any more of the peaks as the sky drove it this way, and if I had more to the left it I think it would have unbalanced the composition. Perhaps I should have shot more to the left to add to this, but I never thought about it. I don't do a lot of pano's, so for me I don't think it's a natural thought to do.