PHANTOM OF THE NIGHT

Milky Way over Thor's Hammer on the Navajo Trail.

It took an entire week for everything to align for night photography, but thankfully by the ...
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Milky Way over Thor's Hammer on the Navajo Trail.

It took an entire week for everything to align for night photography, but thankfully by the end of the trip I was finally able to experience the night sky of the Southwest. Clear skies, considerably less wind than the previous few days and a 5:30 am moon rise made for some pretty stellar conditions (literally).

This image is made up of two frames, a 4 min exposure for the sky using an iOoptron star tracker and a second 4 min exposure for the foreground, which included light painting with a headlamp of the nearby hoodoos. I wish that I had spent a little more time on the foreground, but as a first "real use" test of the star tracker, I'm pretty happy with the results. Now I just have to figure out how to get these results back here in NY. Perhaps we could all turn off our lights during the next New Moon phase? Spread the word :)
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