Autumn Milky Way

[gregbradley]

Taken about 3 weeks ago. A beautiful night in a remote spot at the back of my property. Looking south towards Canberra (the yellow glow).

Canon EOS R, Sigma Art 14 F1.8. 6 x 3minutes ISO3200. Fornax Lightrack ii mount.

https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/170788397/large

Greg

[JA]

Wonderful Milky Way composition esp. with the rolling hills foreground:thumbsup:

Best
JA

[gregbradley]

Thanks JA. I took 3 x 3minute ISO5000 exposures untracked for the landscape part and blended it in with the tracked sky.

I also got Luminar 4 for its easy sky replacement. Not so easy so far but I haven't watched any tutorials yet. Hopefully it makes the process easy not that it was hard on this one.

Greg.

[JA]

Greg you could try Sequator. It is very easy to use and integrate sky and foreground and also it will stack images and remove light pollution to a degree. If you try it use the "uneven" light pollution option with mid level removal.

Best
JA

[gregbradley]

Thanks JA. Yes I use Sequator and used it on this image. Its the best software I have found so far. The freeze ground option works quite well but the exposures need to be around 30 seconds otherwise you still seem to get too much blur.

Greg.

[JA]

It (the blur) may possibly be due to trying to use "freeze ground" in combination with such a wide angle lens. Not sure if you used the "Reduce Distor. effects" option checked on, but when "freeze ground" is also selected the "Reduce Distor. effects" appears to default to "auto" which worked well on one occasion I noticed and better than the "complex" setting normally recommended with wide angle lenses.

Also on another occasion I mistakenly included some of the sky in the ground part of the image, It was only some stars I missed between the branches of a tree.... It didn't like that :D.

Overall I think Sequator is incredible, especially given the light pollution reduction functionality.

Best
JA

[gregbradley]

With this image I did a hide all layer on the bright foreground. I painted it in and a reasonably wide brush. It must have been just right as I only needed to have the brush near the tree and it filled in the areas so no stars between branches.

Trees as you know are difficult that way as the trailed stars can show through and are hard to remove.

I am hoping Luminar 4 will handle that. Too early to say but the AI doesn't seem that smart to me so far!

Also Topaz remask will mask a tree and its branches and not the sky. Its easier to use but again needs a learning curve.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I redid this one although it may look much the same. It represents a bit of a breakthrough for me regarding blending a static landscape with a tracked night sky.

Programs promise this will be easy but it has been elusive for a long time.

This one was using Topaz Mask AI which is the first program I have used that actually worked.

The sky between the tree branches is the hard bit. It did it very well.

https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/170788397/large

Greg.