Awesome pic, and thanks for the camera settings info.
Recent Scott Kelly Twitter pic from the ISS aimed in my general direction. I live in that great blazing blob at the off center and that landmass is barely 100x35 miles. Add persisten haze for a long part of the year and it’s a wonder we can see anything up.
Back in July was at Bryce Canyon NP, a couple of hours further NE from Zion, nearest towns are quite small and in some parts of the park masked by being over the other side of ridges. Did their Astronomy Night program, quite an impressive Dark Sky (and 8000’+ elevations… do not try running up 2 floors of stairs on your first day there if you’re an old sea-leveler).
My wife and I went on a two-week road trip to Yellowstone last month, stopping at Bryce, Zion and Cedar Breaks. It was my plan to take some Milky Way photos at Bryce and Yellowstone, but it was cloudy Every. Single. Night. Finally, on the penultimate night of the trip, I was able to take a decent shot at Springdale (just outside of the entrance to Zion). It was that photo that prompted me to buy the new camera body and lens (I had a D90 before the D7200). I’ll post that photo if there’s any interest.
The most amazing starry sky I’ve ever seen was out in the desert on the Navajo reservation in western NM. We were driving someone home to their hogan late at night and it was way the heck out in the middle of nowhere, many miles away from any paved roads or small towns and at least 40 miles from the nearest ‘big’ city (Gallup). I’ve seen many beautiful starry skies from rural places here in Texas, but this was just jaw-dropping.
Light pollution out in the countryside here in Ireland is pretty bad in a lot of places but there has been an effort in recent times to make our skies darker, so you have things like Kerry Dark-Sky Reserve.
Great picture. Using your location finder I was surprised to see that my location is a yellow-green hue. I thought I’d be much darker, but I don’t see anywhere near the detail that your picture shows.
The best Milky Way I’ve seen was from the summit of Haleakala on Maui. Just after sunset, this gorgeous “cloud” appeared across the sky, and most people began taking pictures (this was years before smart phones). One woman’s flash kept going off, and I asked her why she was using a flash for the Milky Way. She answered me as if it were self-evident: “To make the stars brighter, of course.”
I was at a concert a few weeks back with a friend, who insisted on snapping a few pics with his Android phone. We were, at minimum 60 feet from the stage. Yep, he had his flash on. I let him know that more than 15 or 20 feet from stage his flash was useless.
Nope, he insisted that he needed it. Never did see how those pics turned out. I’m sure they were great!!
I did that a few times as well. Middle of nowhere NM, Middle of nowhere Texas Panhandle, Middle of nowhere West Texas. You really have to be quite far away from any large city, town, industrial complex (oilfields, etc…) to get the best effect. That glow from over the horizon still affects the view, even if the sky above is very dark.
So, you had a find an area that was far enough away that even the over the horizon glow was over the horizon. Not so easy now, but this used to be (1980s) my way of finding a dark sky site that felt truly prehistoric to me:
Drive away from a city/town, take a small hwy off of the major one you’re on and drive and drive, take a road off of that smaller hwy, drive, drive, drive, find a nice spot preferably in a little bit of a valley, ck for any signs of nearby habitation, make sure you are reasonably safe (bears, weirdos, packs of wild missionaries), wait for full dark,… :::ahhh…:::
Then, try to survive the rest of the night. :eek:
Don’t get me wrong, OP, I love your image. It is truly beautiful. I was just commenting on Tangent’s comment about dark sky vs DARK sky.
YMMV
I spent some time hiking and camping in SW Colorado, too. Never could seem to find a really, really DARK sky in those mountains and mountain valleys. I couldn’t tell if it was those small mountain towns having terrible light pollution or if the snow pack from the mountain peaks was reflecting starlight or re-reflecting city glows or something.
I’m having a flash myself right now, of déjà vu. I think we’ve traded stories before when I mentioned people taking pictures of a lunar eclipse with the flash on.
Yeah, that light is going to bounce off the moon and return to your camera before the shutter closes. :smack:
They won’t be great, but they might not be bad. Cameras are pretty good these days, and the average Joe’s tolerance for crap is so high, that he might consider what he got to be a “great” photo.
And I’ll bet all those people at NASCAR races taking flash pictures can’t tell that their flash isn’t doing anything.
As for the person taking a flash picture of a movie, well, I hope she realized that she really was stupid when she sees her nice picture of a white screen!
I was just commenting on Tangent’s comment about dark sky vs DARK sky.