I've always been intrigued by photographing the night stars, so for the last few months, I've been reading up on Star Trails and Milky Way photography and finally got to the point where I had to either do it or forget it. I'll admit that I don't have the ideal lens that the U-tubers are recommending, but I just used my 18-55mm kit lens on my Canon M6 Mark ll mirrorless with a 1.6 crop factor.

On Monday morning (04-12-21) I woke up around 01:30am, threw my gear in the truck and headed out to a deserted First Water Road which runs parallel to Superstition Mountain. My Photo Pills app had indicated that the Milky Way would be right above the mountain at around 03:00, and I was just hoping that the near 5,000ft ridgeline wouldn't be blocking it out.

I drove to one of my favorite parking spots, set up the camera/tripod and checked "Pills" again. Pills showed the Milky Way as being above the mountain with a slight incline to the East, which would put it in-line with the top ridge. I took a series of 'test shots' to see if the camera was pointed right and, after a few adjustments, took a 5-shot sequence. I did the same at five different locations to see which one would provide the best results, then called it a morning at 04:30am and went home to see what the computer would show me.

I used Sequator photo stacking software for the first time, while watching a U-tuber demonstrate its abilities and came out with a final image that I could take to the next step. I loaded the .tiff image into Affinity Photo and made some adjustments to enhance the Milky Way and highlight the face of the mountain and called it quits for the day.

Camera Settings:
Camera set on: Manual
Lens set on: Manual focus
Aperture: f/4 (its minimum)
Exposure time: 15 seconds
ISO: 1,600
White Balance: 4,000 K
Timer Delay: 2 seconds
Focused on: Infinity (I hope)

I'm open to critique/recommendations but keep in mind that this is my first time for celestial photography.

Jack Olson
Apache Junction, Arizona