Mars, Saturn and the Milky Way Rising - 3/14

[Octane]

Mars, Saturn and the Milky Way Rising - 3/14

Mars is the golden orb towards the left of frame, Saturn is the bright point above the first hill about a third of the frame up, and the glorious Milky Way rising out of the second hill. The faint green and red is airglow.

Keen-eyed stargazers will note Scorpius has just cleared the second hill.

My polar alignment on the Polarie was pretty spot on, with only a 2 pixel shift over the course of 32 minutes. The tracked images were average combined using Canon's Digital Photo Professional (composite tool) and the stationary image was then composited in Photoshop.

Photographed from the west side of The Rock, near Wagga Wagga, NSW.

Canon EOS-5D Mark III, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
4 x 480s f/5.6 at 17.0mm iso800 (tracked for the sky)
1 x 480s f/5.6 at 17.0mm iso800 (stationary for the hill)

Slightly larger version available here (http://users.tpg.com.au/hqureshi2/msmw.html).

Thanks for looking.

H

[Rod771]

Its nice and dark out there H, very natural looking scene.

Very nice :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Cheers, Rod.

It's not what I had in mind, but, I was at least out and about and soaked up some starlight. :)

And, a visit by the local constabulary after they had been told that there was a car parked on the side of the road in the middle of the night. I guess it must be an odd thing in those parts!

H

[CapturingTheNight]

Nice one H :thumbsup: Lurking around my area now eh? ;)



Hahaha. That must have been interesting. I have been parking on the sides of roads around here in the middle of the night for years now and I have never had that happen.

[Octane]

Hey Greg,

My best friend's (his name is also Greg!) parents live in Uranquinty. He was going down for the weekend and he asked me to tag along. His parents love me and I hadn't seen them for quite some time so agreed to come along.

Of course, when going to dark skies and on new Moon weekends, one would be remiss to not pack their camera bag and a Polarie. :D

It's so beautiful out that way. I'd love to see more of it, but, alas, I'm now preparing to move to the Sunshine Coast and move in with my wife.

H

[dutch2]

Great location, beautiful shot.
Well done.:thumbsup:

[Rod771]

It's funny you know, that happened to me on my first ever nightscape outing in Gunnedah. I was away from the car, probably 40 meters :question: ,I noticed a four wheel drive pull up next my car. Here we go I thought to myself, thinking they were of the hoodlum type but as I got closer I could see it was the fuzz, phee-eew! Ended up have a good chat with them about night photography.





Yeah that would be right! Always picking on the out of towners ;)

[scottholio]

Wow, the Polarie does a great job tracking. Awesome photo