Milky Way For Sale - Light Painting at IISAC2009

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

It’s been a long time since I’ve had any images to post – fortunately that’s changing now.

We had some great skies up at Lostock at IISAC2009, and I was able to capture some widefield images and some experimental stuff. This image is the first I’ve had a chance to process since coming back, and it’s my first attempt at “light painting“.

It’s called “Milky Way For Sale” and was taken on Saturday night at IISAC2009.

The Milky Way Galaxy was positioned beautifully above the mountain, and Andrew Catsaitis (RB) and I had a great idea for a novelty shot.

On the Saturday night at IISAC2009, my telescope gear was capturing a widefield image of M7 and while chatting with Andrew, I suggested we go down to one end of the main observing field and capture some long exposure images with my Canon 20D on the fixed tripod – highlighting the witches hats (cones) that were positioned to look like an airport runway when the red lights reflected off them.

We set up at the North end of the field, and during a 2-minute exposure, we walked along the field, highlighting the cones with our red head lamps. As we were previewing the images, we saw how beautifully positioned the Milky Way was above the mountain. Andrew suggested I draw an arrow with my head lamp pointing to the Milky Way, and we then came up with the idea to light paint “for sale” as well.

And so here is the result!

The image is a combination of a number of exposures, all taken with my Canon 20D and Sigma 17-70mm lens on a fixed tripod:

- 2x 2min exposures for the foreground “runway”
- 5x 30s exposures for the milky way galaxy
- 1x 15s exposure for the light-painted arrow
- 1x 30s exposure for the light-painted “for sale”
- All combined and layered/masked in Photoshop.

It was great fun, and the result came out better than I expected. The light-painting was interesting – it took about 4 goes to get the arrow how we wanted it, but the ‘for sale’ was done in the first take! I can tell you, it’s hard writing backwards

Thanks to Andrew for the help! I hope you enjoy the image as much as we enjoyed creating it

Larger image here:
Milky Way For Sale

[Benno85 (Ben)]

Bravo Mike, bloody top stuff and full of creativity

With the way we're going clearing land and putting up shoe-box housing it won't be long before we'll need to extend our lease!!

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Very clever, well done
I imagine your asking price would be.....astronomical

[jase (Jason)]

Isn't this suppose to be posted in the IceTrade Classifieds?

Nice one Mike. Good to see you getting back into it.

[h0ughy (David)]

LOL what a classic shot

[alexch (Alex)]

Very creative and nicely done!
Cheers,
Alex

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Love it Mike!! ... a very cool shot!

Let's see now .... I'm actually looking for something a little smaller - say 25 to 50 billion stars. But I'll give you $99,999,999,999.99 (that's Zimbabwe dollars of course) for the lot ... and not a penny more!!!

Cheers, Marcus

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by iceman

.....but the ‘for sale’ was done in the first take! I can tell you, it’s hard writing backwards

Great Mike! That is impressive.

I had been thinking about something at SVAA for my timelapse, but didn't get it done.

I know now that I need the letters SVAA traced up several times each over several frames so see S-V-A-A go past on the video - in a wobbly sort of way.

I'm also sure that if you do it to one side and check that your arm is behind the torch, you can face away from the camera so that your brain doesn't get fuddled!

[Hagar (Doug)]

Now thats diferent Mike, Prefer it's kept free for all thanks.

[Octane (Humayun)]

So, that's what you two were up to!

Very clever.

Regards,
Humayun

[Rodstar (Rod)]

What sort of warranty does the Milky Way come with?

Nice shot, Mike and RB!

[BerrieK]

Looks great Mike. I'll take 2 thanks.

It looks as though it would have been great fun creating this image....very clever.

Kerrie

[bloodhound31]

Ideas man! Bravo!

Baz.

[kinetic (Steve)]

Love it!

Steve

[spearo (Frank)]

HAHAAH
well done! Very creative- i love it

what you SHOULD have done
is light paint a commercial trademark sign !

That would keep the $$ coming in forever!

frank

[RB (Andrew)]

hahaha that turned out great.
We both had a good laugh when we viewed the result on the preview screen that night.

I had a great time, thanks for your company Mike !

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it was great fun capturing the data and was an interesting processing exercise too.

It's nice to have some data to process for a change, too!

More from IISAC2009 coming soon...

Thanks again

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

LOL! Well done Mike.

Reminiscent of mine from last year They're all we get when clouds are in the way. Wish the Milky Way was out back then...

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

It's a scam, don't trust the Real Estate agent on this one...but if you email it to a few million people and say it's from Nigeria you'll get a few takers, who knows what you'll get?...people pay big bucks for bits of toast with the burnt bits in the shape of Jesus Christ..? ..it's an idea...?

Great shot boys

Mike