MIlky way picture and post processing ideas

[butlermike]

Hi all,

Well its been almost a year since my visit to NZ (partly to see friends and partly to see some nice foreign dark skies) so I thought it was about time to have a look at the photos i took in detail and actually do something with them...!

This one of the Milky Way is one of my favourites but I'm struggling to bring out the details as I would like to see. 

It looks like there's a lot of LP at the bottom of the frame but I was at Mount Cook for this so there was none. This was actually the southern lights which were particularly bright for a couple of days around then (it even made it into the news at the time). So that was lucky for me. Although I would like to bring out more of the what was an orange and green cast above the mountains.

What do people think about this processing? I know its subjective but I'd like some feedback. 

This is a combination of 8 exposures (Canon 6D, 24-105mm f4, 10sec exposure) which have been processed in lightroom, manually aligned and median stacked in Photoshop for noise reduction. And then tweaked a bit more in Photoshop.

Are the dust lanes clear enough? Does the galactic centre stand out enough against the rest of the stars (there were a lot! it was so amazing to see)? What's your opinion on the composition of the photo?

In the picture posted here it looks a bit darker than it does on the original but I guess that's saving it in a smaller size.

I also want to print this but its coming out quite dark. Any hints on printing these types of pictures would be gratefully received as well. 

Also if anyone can pick out any constellations for me I would be very grateful as its all a bit 'starry' for me...and the wrong hemisphere.

Thanks for looking 

[happy-kat]

None the less a very nice image

[wxsatuser]

Nice image.

The LP is most likely sky glow., sky glow can be red and green.

I have a 6D and 30 secs shows a lot of red in nebs but have never tried it at 10 secs.

Have put some names on.

[butlermike]

Thanks both.

And thanks Mike for the annotations that's a great help.

I had to shoot at 10 seconds as I only had a tripod and a 24mm lens. Any longer and I was getting star trails.

I shot it at 10,000 ISO which in hindsight was a bit high as its blown out the brighter stars. I could have gone lower and done more in post. 

the LP was from the lights as it was in the paper the next day. There were some pictures I saw then that had the same colours as I am getting in this. Just lucky i was behind the mountain that blocked most of it out otherwise it might have blown out the images. But I like the extra colour in the picture, I think I could bring it out even more.