Wilderness Images Loc: Apache Junction, AZ.

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

(Download)

BassmanBruce Loc: Middle of the Mitten

Dam nice photo, good job!
Infinity focus looks very good to me.
Was sequator used to stack for noise reduction or to enhance star brightness?

fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

Beautiful shot.

7awol Loc: Butler, Pa

You nailed lt! Love the planning and execution. Your watermark is too big, pulls my eye away from your marvelous composition. Thanks for sharing your adventure.
Dean

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Very Nice image. The next step if you want to really get into it is to get a camera tracker to avoid any star trails and take longer exposures and or stack multiple exposures to really bring out the nebula and the milky way. Of course tracking will end up blurring the fore ground so it requires taken on frame of the foreground and then adding the stacked milky way back in afterwards. I have not tried this exact scenario but I have done similar things when I shot comet neowise. In this case since the comet moved relative to the background stars I took multiple frames, from these frames I made two sets of image, one with the stars subtracted out and one with the comet subtracted out. I then stacked the first set with the comet kept stationary and the second set with the stars kept stationary, then added them back together in the final image.

Here are links to some of the results of this process including the last link to a very compressed movie of the comet moving relative to the stars.
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-656332-1.html
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-656754-1.html
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-657398-1.html
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-657780-1.html

J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

Nice job! Where did the light on the mountians come from? It looks like it was light painted. Do you PhotoPills to plan all your night shots?

Baysitter11 Loc: Cincinnati

Love it!

Wilderness Images Loc: Apache Junction, AZ.

Thanks for the reply Bruce, yes, I used Sequator for stacking the 5-shot group photos and did use the noise reduction and star brightening features. I'm sure they helped but I even added noise removal in Affinity Photo too.

Jack Olson

Wilderness Images Loc: Apache Junction, AZ.

Thanks for the reply Ballard, I don't think I'll be getting into a tracker any time soon. This was mainly an exploratory outing and I learned a lot from it, and there's still a lot more to become familiar with. The Sequator stacking software package was helpful but there's not many U-tube tutorials in that area yet.

Those are some outstanding photosets that you have links to, but again, I think that's out of my league.

Jack Olson

Wilderness Images Loc: Apache Junction, AZ.

Thanks for the reply Fstop12. There were lots of houses along the foothills that added to the lighting on the mountain. I had to clone those lights out as they were a major distraction and then I masked the mountain in Affinity and enhanced the lighting a bit. PhotoPills and Sequator stacker are high on my list of projects that I have to become more familiar with.

Jack Olson

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Spectacular image!

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

tony85629 Loc: Sahuarita, Az

Outstanding image!!