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Mendip Milky Way Arch


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Over the new moon I popped up to Priddy Pools on the Mendip Hills to capture a rather wide Milky Way arch over a popular local subject, a lone Scots Pine.  Dealing with the light pollution bubble from Bristol was a nightmare but I think I have a reasonable balance where the LED glow doesn't detract from the image too much.

The sky is tracked using the LX3 tracker, 2 x 80s per pane.  Taken with my astro-modded 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/2.  12 panes stitched in MS ICE.

The foreground was taken with a standard 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/8.  12 30s exposures light painted and stitched in MS ICE.

All editing carried out with Siril and GIMP.  The mask to blend the two images took forever to get right.  This is a very low quality version that has been downscaled X2.

Priddy_Pools_Arch_VLowQ.jpg

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That was worth waiting for, Jody - exquisite! Not a lot you can do about the Bristol light dome, but it actually balances the MW core in the image so I’d say it’s still a very successful pano. ☺️
 

Good idea to use an unmodded 6D for the foreground. I’ve recently acquired an unmodified version for that as well as time lapses. Getting the right white balance with the modded version really is quite challenging (if you’re me!).

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1 hour ago, FenlandPaul said:

That was worth waiting for, Jody - exquisite! Not a lot you can do about the Bristol light dome, but it actually balances the MW core in the image so I’d say it’s still a very successful pano. ☺️
 

Good idea to use an unmodded 6D for the foreground. I’ve recently acquired an unmodified version for that as well as time lapses. Getting the right white balance with the modded version really is quite challenging (if you’re me!).

Thanks Paul.  It was a real pain to pull together, ICE struggled with the sky, I almost gave up.  Left it a day and came back to it and the ICE algorithm stitched it first time... Pretty sure I did nothing different!  I have got the White Balance right in the past with the modded cam, I set it 2500K in cam and that makes post processing easier.

The original Pano is nearly 500mb...  I'm glad I have a powerful laptop but at points it was struggling.

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11 minutes ago, Zummerzet_Leveller said:

Thanks Paul.  It was a real pain to pull together, ICE struggled with the sky, I almost gave up.  Left it a day and came back to it and the ICE algorithm stitched it first time... Pretty sure I did nothing different!  I have got the White Balance right in the past with the modded cam, I set it 2500K in cam and that makes post processing easier.

The original Pano is nearly 500mb...  I'm glad I have a powerful laptop but at points it was struggling.

Well worth it! I really don’t understand how ICE gives different outcomes depending on weather / mood / date / what the operator has for dinner. But glad you managed to get it to work.

Panos can be enormous files, especially if you’re stacking the individual frames!

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On 14/04/2022 at 20:25, adyj1 said:

Spectacular.

And now I know why it is called wide-field astrophotography 😁 

Thank you.  It was a monster to pull together, the fans on my laptop lost about 10 years of life!

On 14/04/2022 at 20:26, Kon said:

That's fantastic! A lot of details.

Thanks.  Might try an get this one printed as the full scale one could go quite large.

 

5 hours ago, clarkpm4242 said:

@Zummerzet_Leveller really like the feel of this.  The lighting on the tree also gives it a bit of depth.  Loverly.

I tried to push some of the image focus to the tree as there is so much going on.  Thank you for the feedback and nice comment.

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On 14/04/2022 at 18:48, Zummerzet_Leveller said:

Over the new moon I popped up to Priddy Pools on the Mendip Hills to capture a rather wide Milky Way arch over a popular local subject, a lone Scots Pine.  Dealing with the light pollution bubble from Bristol was a nightmare but I think I have a reasonable balance where the LED glow doesn't detract from the image too much.

The sky is tracked using the LX3 tracker, 2 x 80s per pane.  Taken with my astro-modded 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/2.  12 panes stitched in MS ICE.

The foreground was taken with a standard 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/8.  12 30s exposures light painted and stitched in MS ICE.

All editing carried out with Siril and GIMP.  The mask to blend the two images took forever to get right.  This is a very low quality version that has been downscaled X2.

Priddy_Pools_Arch_VLowQ.jpg

Stunning, needs to go on a wall.

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