While the photo may not be a great one I intend this post as a small tutorial about how to shoot the Milky Way. As you know the Milky way is the plane of our own galaxy, it can be seen at almost any time of the year from any place in the world as long as you have dark skies without night pollution.

The best way to capture a nightscape featuring the milky way is to approach the photo as two pictures, one for the sky and one for the ground or foreground element. For the sky I took 10 shots with my lens wide open at ISO3200 exposing for 20 seconds, the longest possible exposure for round stars. Then I stacked all the shots using DeepSkyStacker, a free astrophotography software that creates an enhanced image with less noise and better detail from many identical exposures. Then I processed the resulting stacked image in photoshop chancing levels, curves, saturation, the usual stuff.The foreground was light painted with a flashlight and shot at ISO400 and F11 for 10 seconds.

The reddish area in the Milky Way is the Eta Carina Nebula a very big nebula around the very special hyper massive Eta Carina Star. Colors are natural. Handling white balance is difficult for the stars. Unless you really know the night sky I suggest using a gray card to take a reference shot for later WB correction. In the second shot I went with a cooler WB setting to get blue skies.

While the Milky way is beautiful at almost at any time of the year it can be a good idea to prepare the shot anticipating the night sky. I use Stellarium to see how the sky will look at any time of the year from any place in the world. Your ideal conditions are dark nights without the moon, the Sagittarius and Scorpio areas of the Milky Way are the brightest ones point to them if you have them in your night sky. The southern Milky way can also be quite beautiful, featuring the southern cross, the Magellan clouds and the coalsack dark nebula, those can be seen in the second photo. The Magellan clouds are satellite galaxies to the Milky way appearing as diffuse ovals on the right, the big Magellan cloud up and the small Magellan cloud below near the crop field used as a foreground element.

Research your skies and find a night to shoot the Milky Way it can be a very rewarding experience.

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