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On The Road and In Your Backyard is a weekday feature spotlighting reader submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, please share your part of the world, whether you’re traveling or just in your locality. Share some photos and a narrative, let us see through your pictures and words. We’re so lucky each and every day to see and appreciate the world around us!
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Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Prepare for some amazement today!
Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.
How do you spend hours in a dark place and only take 3 pictures? Easy if you’re trying to take certain types of photos of our skies. These photos and video(if I can get the links to work, otherwise I’ll add them to the comments) were taken at three locations I’ve been to before(Twin Bush, Lockwood Valley, and Red Rock), but with a different emphasis this time out. I wanted to concentrate on getting a timelapse of the Milky Way rising(I originally wanted to do it in conjunction with the sunrise, but the weather had other ideas), star trails, and close-ups of the nebula that are in the “summer” Milky Way.
Taken on 2019-04-27 00:00:00
Lockwood Valley, CA
Star trails are an attractive and easy shot to make; they to take a bit of time to take though. You set up a camera pointed at the sky and take a long(the longer the better) shot or series of shots of the sky(with multiple shots you have to combine them in Photoshop). This shot is pointed north at Polaris over Mt. Pinos(last seen in our visit to the Carrizo Plain). This shot is not quite perfect, someone forgot to check to make sure his camera’s battery was fully charged before leaving home and also forgot to pack an extra battery(it was in the IR camera bag), so the series of shots was only about 40 minutes. I also didn’t capture enough of the foreground to get the light painting I was doing(I had to use my NX1 to do the foreground shot).
Taken on 2019-05-03 00:00:00
Red Rock State Park, Cantil, CA
After the previous week’s unfortunate battery incident, I traveled to Red Rock and shot star trails(again pointed at Polaris) against the Red Cliffs. I didn’t use a foreground shot here since once I’d processed the sky shot, I didn’t think I really needed one. I used the stacking software(Sequator) that I used for capturing nebula and the Red Cliffs were getting enough cumulative light from the passing cars to get uniformly lit. This exposure was a series of 30 second exposures over 90 minutes.
Taken on 2019-04-13 00:00:00
Twin Bush, Mugu State Park, California
When you see a visible light photo of the Milky Way, you’ll notice that the galactic center has a dark area that runs though it, this is known as the great rift. It’s a cloud of dust that’s between us and the galactic center of our galaxy. In front of that dust cloud we can see some stars and nebula, which you can pretty clearly see in any Milky Way photo. The Lagoon Nebula is pretty prominent, showing up as a small pink or magenta area in the Great Rift. Here’s a close-up of Lagoon with the smaller Trifed Nebula just above it. You can see part of the galactic center at the bottom of the photo as well. This was taken with the startracker,; 40, 30 second exposures taken at 200mm.
Taken on 2019-03-30 00:00:00
Twin Bush, Mugu State Park, California
While it’s not optimal to attempt to photograph the Milky Way with the moon in the sky, it can be done and a pleasing shot can be had. Here’s the rising crescent moon rising and reflected off the Pacific with the Milky Way to the right.
Taken on Various
Twin Bush, Mugu & Red Rock State Parks, California
Here’s a link(if it works) to two time lapses of the Milky Way rising. The first was shot in Lockwood Valley with a one minute interval between 25 second shots(the interval was too long). The second was shot at Red Rock with at 15 second shot(too short) and a 5 second interval.
https://www.billinglendaleca.com/Galleries/Time-Lapse/i-26zXrLG
Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
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