Milky Way, Sugar Hill Reservoir, Vermont

A learning curve, for sure. This mosaic / panorama is 120 images, 4 shots each from 30 camera positions. Each image has been stacked on top of each other and aligned to mean out some of the noise of shooting ISO 1600 for 30 seconds each shot. It took well over an hour to shoot the 30 camera positions – 4 shots, move, shoot 4 shots, etc., including shots I dod not use at the edges for overlap. As I was operating and moving the camera those wispy clouds were moving though the scene, which added quite a wrinkle to processing.

After stacking the images I stitched 30 of the composites into this image with AutoPano Giga, then processed in Lightroom to edit for color, brightness, and noise.

I made this with my little Canon M6 with the EFM 22 f/2 lens @ f2.8 for 30 seconds each frame, ISO 1600. The camera mounted to a Pano / Nodal head atop a Vixen Polarie star tracker which points at the north star and rotates at the same speed as the stars. The full size, original image is 10,343 pixels wide x 12,929 pixels tall.

Milky Way

I worked a bit more on the images I captured Monday morning. I went through the process of stacking what I had captured, then stitching and attempting to hand color / balance the frames that were captured well into astronomical twilight – the time when the sun is starting to light the dome of the sky and everything changes so quickly…

Cropped and Processed Milky Way over the Green Mountains

I learn so much by doing – so I need to keep doing, making, creating. And failing.

Imagine, Create, Fail, Learn, Repeat

Humbling, to capture the night sky. This whole process is a work in progress for me. So much going on, I need to backtrack and break it down one piece at a time. Stars move. It is dark, but there are shadows. Focus is hard to get right on pinpoint bits or light millions and millions of miles away. ISO, Aperture, tracking, alignment – so many moving pieces.

So much wrong, but so good to get out and give this a try. Couldn’t sleep last night, so I grabbed the camera and gear and went off to one of 2 sites I had in mind. Didn’t like #1 and went to this alternate. Not ideal, the core was behind the ridge, but relatively dark.

Tracking, panorama, changing light, moving stars, hard to process, and I saw a bear.

The color all over – light pollution, and then by the time I shot the last panel the sky was changing over to blue. Processed by the seat of my pants just to get it done and out of my system, so I can learn and move on to the next one.

The foreground is a blur as I was tracking and did not have time to shoot a static foreground – sky changed, I needed to get home to prep kids for school, and I was frozen.

Canon M6 with EF-M 22 on Vixen Polarie tracker, lined up via compass and through the eye hole.

90s exposures, 4 in each position hoping to stack them – but I haven’t done that yet.

I should have stepped down to 2.8 from 2.5 to control distortion at the edges of the lens. Next time.

And, next time I’ll use the RRS pano / nodal setup to make overlap and alignment easier. Eyeball overlap in the dark is really hard to get right – lots of wasted pixels this morning.

Imagine, create, fail, learn, repeat.

Its not a great astro image, but its mine, and it is another stepping stone.

Spring Panorama

From Shelburne Farms, VT – Mt. Mansfield on the left, Camel’s Hump on the right, and the amazing Farm Barn in view. Taken during and after school walk, hand held and hastily stitched in Lightroom.

Wolfe’s Neck 2

A second panorama I shot at Wolfe’s Neck State Park, Maine. I have some stitching glitches to resolve in the water / reflections – going to be a bit of an education cloning and hand painting in PhotoShop.

Milky Way – Silver Lake

1:30am alarm, car at 2, hiked into Silver Lake in the Green Mountain National Forest. The sky changes so quickly as dawn approaches – first shot in this series at 4:13am, last shot at 4:50am.