Ngarkat Milky Way

Taken on a 4WD trip along the Border Trail (Vic/SA), in Ngarkat Conservation Park.

We had a brief 30-60 minutes of darkness before the moon rose, and I used this opportunity to take as many photos as I could.

Image is composed from 9 30 second consecutive exposures, manually aligned, then stacked. I'm quite happy with how this turned out, but I can see I still need plenty of practice with masking... not too happy with the noise around the trees. Not sure how to fix that yet.

That said! I used a very low ISO of 400 which still came out spectacularly well I think, and helped reduce the noise plenty.

Next time, I need to try using the Long Exposure Noise Reduction setting, that may improve it even further.

Also featuring special guest star Tarantula Nebula in the top right quadrant - the thing that looks like a bit of a whispy purple cloud!

Done