October 7, 2020
Deep Space comes to the Milky Way
The past month has not been good for shooting the last of the Milky Way season here in California since the skies have be shrouded in smoke. I'd posted my photo of the the galactic core over the Amboy Crater on the local photography group's Facebook page and one of the commenters asked if I'd tried using "star minimization". "Star minimization" removes the stars(and noise) from the photo and allows you to process the nebulosity separate from the stars. I've used it for deep space objects and it really does highlight the dimmer parts of the image without blowing out the stars and any noise in the image. I'd never tried this approach to landscape astrophotography and after I used it on the Amboy Crater image, I wondered why I'd not done it before.
The first shot in this series involved another technique that I've used to photograph deep space objects used brought to Milky Way photography. I took a series of 30 second exposures using my star tracker(I was using it for photos of NEOWISE earlier in the evening). One of the reasons I've not used the tracker more for landscape astrophotography is that a long tracked photo blurs the foreground since the tracker is following the movement of the stars. This can make it difficult to blend the foreground in with the sky. I was normally shooting 5-10 minute exposures when I used the star tracker, so I thought I'd try shooting multiple exposures with the tracker and then stacking. I light painted the foreground and blended them.
Read MoreThe past month has not been good for shooting the last of the Milky Way season here in California since the skies have be shrouded in smoke. I'd posted my photo of the the galactic core over the Amboy Crater on the local photography group's Facebook page and one of the commenters asked if I'd tried using "star minimization". "Star minimization" removes the stars(and noise) from the photo and allows you to process the nebulosity separate from the stars. I've used it for deep space objects and it really does highlight the dimmer parts of the image without blowing out the stars and any noise in the image. I'd never tried this approach to landscape astrophotography and after I used it on the Amboy Crater image, I wondered why I'd not done it before.
The first shot in this series involved another technique that I've used to photograph deep space objects used brought to Milky Way photography. I took a series of 30 second exposures using my star tracker(I was using it for photos of NEOWISE earlier in the evening). One of the reasons I've not used the tracker more for landscape astrophotography is that a long tracked photo blurs the foreground since the tracker is following the movement of the stars. This can make it difficult to blend the foreground in with the sky. I was normally shooting 5-10 minute exposures when I used the star tracker, so I thought I'd try shooting multiple exposures with the tracker and then stacking. I light painted the foreground and blended them.
