The Milky Way

moose135 · September 21, 2014

I've been trying to do this for a little while now, but clouds have foiled most of my attempts so far. I was out to the Great Smoky Mountains over the weekend, and finally got clear skies (at least for a few hours) on Saturday night. These were taken at Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smokies.

It's probably a shooting star, but there's a chance it's a UFO...

The Milky Way:

ian408 · September 21, 2014

You did a nice job!

moose135 · September 23, 2014

Thank you, Ian!

kdog · September 24, 2014

The milky way shots are good, but the meteor shot is my favorite.

boco · September 24, 2014

mooie reeks.
ook voorkeur voor de laatste opname.
grt,boco.

JC · September 24, 2014

The first shot looks like an Iridium flare to me. (time of day looks right for it, if your Exif data is correct) You can go here http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx , put in your location, and then check the date and time to see if that is what it is.

The first image lacks any real subject (excluding the lucky flare), and the wide angle distortion looks really odd, I try not to put strong vertical elements on the edge of my wide angle shots (like that tree) if I can help it, if I'm not going to correct the distortion, and so the image doesn't really grab me.

The second and third shots have great foreground framing. The cliff edge and trees on the left side of the second one are great. They make such a great foreground, I'd even consider cropping out the right side of the picture to emphasize the left side, or trying that shot again with the camera oriented in portrait mode.

Pretty good job of the skies so close to civilization.

moose135 · September 25, 2014

JC wrote: »

The first shot looks like an Iridium flare to me

You may be right - I was not familiar with Iridium flares before. Looking at images online, it looks like that may be what I caught.

JC wrote: »

The first image lacks any real subject (excluding the lucky flare), and the wide angle distortion looks really odd, I try not to put strong vertical elements on the edge of my wide angle shots (like that tree) if I can help it, if I'm not going to correct the distortion, and so the image doesn't really grab me.

I don't disagree with you - if not for the flare, I probably would not have bothered to process it.

JC wrote: »

The second and third shots have great foreground framing. The cliff edge and trees on the left side of the second one are great. They make such a great foreground, I'd even consider cropping out the right side of the picture to emphasize the left side, or trying that shot again with the camera oriented in portrait mode.

I did take a few portrait shots from that spot...I've also been playing with some different techniques for processing these (seems like there are a million different techniques online) and I'd appreciate your thoughts.

JC · September 30, 2014

I think that unless you have a totally killer foreground that demands landscape, the milky way looks best in portrait mode, and while you have an interesting foreground, it's not competing very much with the milky way.

I think a shot from this location, but setup more the left, so that the milky way is rising just adjacent to, or over, that cliffy slop with the overhanging rock and the trees on top. If you could isolate the foreground to that slope in profile against the Milky Way, I think that would be an awesome shot.

As far as processing, with all the urban sky glow you've got, I'd try shooting a series of ~5 second images and stacking them (there are several astophotography stacking programs- the one I use has a bit of problem with SWA lenses though, I can't pull the lens data from your images), and then using some layers to pick one of the images for the foreground and masking it back into the stack.

Do you ever get a mass of really low level clouds that would blanket the urban center, but be below that vista point? You could get some really interesting shots maximizing the urban sky glow on the clouds AND the Milky way then.

GSPeP · October 1, 2014

I like pictures like this.

Where I live there is a lot of light pollution. No chance of taking pictures like that.

JC · October 1, 2014

GSPeP wrote: »

I like pictures like this.

Where I live there is a lot of light pollution. No chance of taking pictures like that.

Don't give up, by stacking shorter exposures you can pull a lot more out of the night sky than you think you can, even in urban settings. You can either use astrophotography stacking sortware that will automatically align sequential images, or invest in a tracking mount. I have used Deepsky stacker, cause it's free, but it doesn't work so well on Ultrawide angle lenses, then there are commercial software packages like Registar that I'm told work better.

You won't get a classic dark sky Milky way, but you can get some dramatic images incorporating the urban elements.

The Milky Way

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