Partly Cloudy Milky Way Panorama at the Trona Pinnacles

Lately I've come to the conclusion that a few clouds can actually make a Milky Way photo more dramatic - rather than detracting from it. It was a bit more cloudy this night than it was when I shot the other panorama from here that I recently posted. The really bright area of light pollution to the left is from the Searles Valley Minerals soda ash processing plant. Judging from the number of abandoned homes and business in town, the plant likely employs far fewer people these days than it once did.

This panorama was stitched together from 23 vertical frames shot with my Canon 6D and Sigma 15mm EX DG at 25 sec f-2.8 ISO 3200.

The Trona Pinnacles are an unusual geological feature in the California Desert National Conservation Area. The unusual landscape consists of more than 500 tufa spires (porous rock formed as a deposit when springs interact with other bodies of water), some as high as 140 feet (43 m), rising from the bed of the Searles Lake (dry) basin. The pinnacles vary in size and shape from short and squat to tall and thin, and are composed primarily of calcium carbonate (tufa). They now sit isolated and slowly crumbling away near the south end of the valley, surrounded by many square miles of flat, dried mud and with stark mountain ranges at either side.

The Pinnacles are recognizable in more than a dozen hit movies. Over thirty film projects a year are shot among the tufa pinnacles, including backdrops for car commercials and sci-fi movies and television series such as Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Disney's Dinosaur, The Gate II, Lost in Space, and Planet of the Apes.
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