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A Perseid Milky Way
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A Perseid Milky Way



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Taken during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in August 2015. This shows the southern Milky Way (the brightest area is towards the center of our home galax...
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Taken during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in August 2015. This shows the southern Milky Way (the brightest area is towards the center of our home galaxy), which is on the other side of the sky from the constellation Perseus, which is the radiant (apparent radial source). The Milky Way was a stack of about 225 images, and the meteors were painstakingly manually derotated and composited from the best of nearly 750 photos taken that night.
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cameraCanon EOS 6D

settings ISO 1000 Shutter 10/1 

upload_dateNov, 2015

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Contest Finalist in Day Or Night Photo Contest
People's Choice in Long Exposure Night Photography Photo Challenge
Peer Award
ClaritaBethCanlasMiller Ulysees Vorster gman176 davidjprosser PhotosByJEM Tudorof +117
Superb Composition
mswizard8 coxcraig cohooper 2196_9208 Jonsoundman Loekie brittanybk98 +17
Absolute Masterpiece
dumbdrum MarleneBalixa AetherPhotographics Pauldc1 MaggieMays sweetpea72 johnboywalton196 +14
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patrykcorg laurieleigh_0232 ane__wr Furtado66 AmielTPhotography toxictabasco elabrozzi +12
Superior Skill
hiyahercfarm stephaniemwood Gilleroo1 cmorisset Dacemac Reefined NatashaHaggard +7
Outstanding Creativity
rickwalker_6987 mattgraham johnmontgomery forum8fox aprillewis debsici olmosfamily +4
Magnificent Capture
gennacard Anndie finosandrea debhall jaimeelee bigblockcarl sammyrivera
All Star
Gayle_Solis Reebee Pixelbug LaYue bradnel my3girls
Love it
heatond1 stevenranger diannemariehoffmeyer MonikaKalmar

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4 Comments |
Globalis
 
Globalis February 05, 2016
Hi Great shot and congratulations , well deserved. I am trying to do a stars shot please tell me was it a 10 second shot ISO 1000 what aperture please?
NatashaHaggard
 
NatashaHaggard March 22, 2016
Thank you for sharing such a detailed story behind this image!!
carmenblaser
 
carmenblaser May 27, 2016
Fantastic shot, very nice moment!
Drabsage
 
Drabsage July 14, 2016
I can't really list all that I love about this photo. Its perfect in every way!

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Tags

#meteors #meteor show #milky way #stars #night #night sky #perseids #composite
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Behind The Lens

Location

The photos composited for this image were taken in a field behind my house, maybe a 2/3 of a mile hike. I live in an area with less light pollution that most areas of the US, which fortunately means I don't have to go too far for a good night sky. Although meteor showers are traditionally photographed facing the radiant (the apparent source of the meteors, where their trails 'point'), I chose to face in the other direction so that I could also get a nice shot of the southern Milky Way, toward the center of our galactic disk. I had scouted the land behind my property earlier, and had found a nice spot on a hill with the treeline toward the south at a good distance to maximize my southern view.

Time

The 736 photos I took for the composite were taken by intervalometer between 2:38 AM and 5:44 AM, on the morning of Aug. 13, 2015. The conditions were as good as they get for a meter shower -- there was no moon in the sky, no clouds, and very little haze. My location gets a little light polution, but not too bad. The sky transparency helped minimize the effects of stray light. I spent most of this time indoors while my camera was left shooting in the field. I hiked out in the dark twice during this period to check on things and swap out the battery, and then left it to shoot until it ran down and fetched it in the morning.

Lighting

Night sky exposures are always about finding a balance. Too short of an exposure and you have to ramp up your ISO to clearly see the Milky Way. Too long of an exposure and you risk getting star trails (which are also fun to shoot, but only if that's your goal!). I decided to lean towards a shorter exposure with higher ISO in this case, and after probably 40 test shots for exposure and focus, I decided on 10 second exposures with ISO 1000. My Canon 6D does very well with high ISO, so I wasn't too worried about sensor noise at 1000. And my hope was that a higher ISO would let me capture brief meteors that wouldn't last for the entire exposure. In other words, I decided on the settings based on the target that would only be in the frame for less than a second, rather that what would be in the frame for the entire shot.

Equipment

This was shot on my Canon 6D, with a Samyang 24mm f1.4, stopped down to 2.8 to maximize sharpness. I mounted on my Vanguard Alta Pro 263AT tripod, with a ball head, and my camera bag suspended in a tripod hammock beneath it to add weight for stability and vibration dampening. I used an intervalometer for timed triggering. Another important but non obvious piece of 'equipment' I used was a chemical "hot hands" hand warmer and strip of velcro! This night was my second attempt at the meteor shower, after having to throw out nearly an entire night's worth of images because of dew clouding up my lens. By using a warmer strapped to the end of my lens, I was able to keep the glass slightly above ambient temperatures, which prevented dew from forming. My lens was still perfectly dry when I fetched my camera the next morning!

Inspiration

In a way, it was this event that inspired my photography. I've been interested in photography for many, many years, but had never had the budget for anything beyond a small bridge camera. I've also been a binocular backyard astronomer for several years. When I read about the Perseids arriving at a new moon, suddenly the time seemed ripe. I chose a Canon 6D specifically because of its low light and astro performance, and the Samyang 24mm f1.4 was one of the first lenses I got for it -- and arrived a mere four days before I took this shot. Everything just fell into place! I've since used my 6D for everything from macro to landscapes, and the 24mm lens remains one of my favorites.

Editing

Yes it actually took me several days to complete the post-processing involved for this. I selected a range of more than 200 images to stack for the milky way, after eliminating ones with airplane lights flying across them. I stacked and processed this set with DeepSkyStacker (this took most of a day, just to process) to create the base image. Then I went back through each frame and marked which ones had 'caught' meteors - 42 of the 736. I had to take breaks a lot while doing this because finding tiny, dim streaks on a mostly black backgrounds takes a good bit of concentration and my eyes would tire! Only a small handful of the meteors I caught were truly obvious, and none of them were visible in thumbnail previews. Once I had isolated the meteors, I took my DSS composited milky way and the meteor shots into Photoshop. I cropped the meteors out from their surroundings, but made sure to include at least a few bright stars around the meteor as well. These became markers that allowed me to derotate and position the meteors into the right part of the sky, to counter the effect of the earth's rotation during the night. I then masked out and blended the surrounding area to leave a naked meteor on the background. Repeat ad nauseum! Finally I took the mid-point image of the milky way stack image range as a base, and overlaid the foreground trees on top.

In my camera bag

My only camera body right now is my Canon 6D, so that goes everywhere. I'm currently researching micro-four-thirds bodies though, so that may change soon. My bag always has my Samyang 24mm f1.4, as well as my 24-105mm kit lens. It's not the L version, just standard, but the flexibility of that focal range is great. I keep a Canon 50mm f1.4 with me as well - it doesn't get used a whole lot but it's small so why not! Two other they're-small-so-why-not items I carry are a set of extension tubes and a 2x teleconverter. I frequently carry a Tamron 180mm f3.5 macro lens, and it's one of my most used lenses, as I do so much macro work (I like looking down maybe more than I like looking up!). I will sometimes carry my Sigma 150-600mm C with me for wildlife and some landscape/astro work - I've taken several shots of a giant (looking) moon behind an iconic mountain near where I live with that lens! I will bring my tripod if I'm doing landscapes or astro, but for a lot of things I'm just happier shooting handheld so I'll leave it behind probably more than what's good for me. I might also bring a speedlight or two, especially for macro work.

Feedback

If you've never taken any night sky photos, then doing a bit of research beforehand will help out immensly (as with anything!). Look up event schedules such as when meteor showers peak and the lunar phase, as well as keep an eye on weather conditions. In addition to the standard weather forecast, additional information helps to forecast a good night sky, and the Clear Sky Chart is very useful at http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/. Find time to scout out a good location ahead of time, or at the very least do some research with The Photographer's Ephemeris at http://photoephemeris.com, it's what I've used for all of my moonrise/set photos. And dress warm! A rule of thumb is, if you're lying or sitting still, dress as if it's twenty degrees colder than what the thermometer says. For most night landscapes you will want the widest, fastest lens you have. Also, you need to choose a lens that has minimized something you might not have cared about in lenses before, called 'coma.' Coma is a distortion of point light sources in corners where stars look like seagulls or 'm's. Samyang lenses (also found under the brands Rokinon, Bower, and others) have very favorable reviews for astro work, especially their 24mm f1.4 and 14mm f2.8. The Lonely Speck at http://www.lonelyspeck.com has some great reviews on astrophotography equipment. You'll need an intervalometer if your camera doesn't have a built in interval function. I haven't tried it personally but Magic Lantern can add this feature (along with others) to some Canon cameras. You could also hook your camera up to a laptop and control from there but I'd be concerned about dew in overnight shots. Laptops tend to be less weather sealed than cameras. And one final thing - meteor showers are beautiful and should not be missed! Even though I spent most of the night these photos were taken indoors, I went out the following night and spent several hours just on my back on a blanket in a field. It's worth seeing with your eyes, and not just through a viewfinder. That goes for all photography. Never get so involved in the end result you miss enjoying the thing itself.

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