AstroLandscapes #18 - city centre Milky Way

[FenlandPaul]

This project was more of an experiment, but one that I think has shown some promise.  The idea was to capture a cityscape along with the Milky Way.

That meant that at just gone midnight last night, I crept out of bed and left my home under bortle 4 skies to drive into the centre of Cambridge.  On the drive it occurred to me that it was a rare clear new moon night and I was eschewing reasonably decent back garden skies for the ever-brightening, mucky skies of Cambridge - which I'd estimate is bortle 7.  I have to say I didn't feel like the smartest guy in the car at that point, and I was travelling alone....

But when I arrived at Castle Mound, an old motte just to the north of the city centre, I was pleasantly surprised that I could make out a decent number of stars.  Absolutely no sign of the milky way, but certainly not a starless soup like it can be from some cities.  

I set about taking a series of test exposures at differing ISO and F/ratio to push the histogram as far to the right as I could without blowing out the highlights (at least not by much).  I'd read a bit about some successes a guy had in Singapore using this ETTR ("expose to the right") method, so thought it was worth a try.  There was no sign of the milky way on the back of the camera, so this was very much a a faith exercise.  In the end, I stacked 41 frames of 25s each.  Processing in lightroom with my very basic skills was something of a challenge, but to be honest I'm just thrilled that I managed to pull a clear Milky Way from these sorts of skies.  

📷 Canon 6D mk1 with Samyang 14mm at f/2.8

🔧 41 x 25s exposures at ISO1600 (with 10x 25s dark frames)

🎞 Stacked in Sequator and edited in Lightroom

Anyway, I hope this serves to inspire anyone thinking about attempting nightscapes from heavily light polluted areas.  There's a lot to improve on here, particularly in the editing, but it'll keep me from fearing light pollution in all but the most densely populated areas in the future.  Hope you enjoy - please do let me have your hints, tips and comments.  😊

 

[vineyard]

That's v cool - an unusual photo of Cambridge!  I'll have to try ETTR here in Bortle 8👍🏾