A Crown of Stars

Image Critiques Nightscape & Astro Critiques
1

Z1 Panorama-Edit-6.jpg
Z1 Panorama-Edit-6.jpg2048×784 1.77 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

A Crown of Stars

The bane of an astrophotographer’s existence is a cloudy night sky. The bane of an astrophotographer that has to work 40+ hours a week is when a clear, moonless sky appears on a night when he’s got to be to work first thing in the morning. Conversely, the bubbling joy of an employed astrophotographer is when the sky is clear at 4 am on a Saturday morning AND the moon has already set! I was quite thrilled to be able to capture my first Milky Way Pano of the season this morning. Nothing could be more appropriate than to crown our beloved Bridger Mountains with a tiny segment of our universe.

Specific Feedback

The city of Bozeman, Montana is about 10 miles to my south from this location. There is quite the dome of light emanating from there. It is more pronounced in winter when there is snow on the ground. I used a mix of linear gradient and large radial filters to try to minimize it. I added a very faint vignette to further darken that right edge. I’d be interesting in hearing what you all do to edit out light pollution when your subject wont move to a darker location!

Technical Details

Nikon D850
Sigma Art 20mm 1.4
ISO 6400, f/2.8, 8 seconds

This is an 8 image pano of vertical images. Each image is stacked with 10 lights and 40 darks stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker.
Merged in PTGui Pro
Processed in Lightroom
Star reduction with Ministars in Photoshop
Foreground noise reduction in Topaz Sharpen Ai

2

Lovely, but I’m getting very cold just looking at it! And 4 am is true dedication, but that’s when “the stars are aligned” this time of year. The arched MW is so low on the horizon that in many locations the density of air pollution mixed with light pollution makes it a very challenging subject. Your clear, dry air probably helps and you have done a wonderful job here bringing out the faint structures. Whatever you did to reduce the LP looks completely natural to me. The faint bit of ambient light on the mountains is wonderful!

I’m not sure how I feel about the road, but I’m sure it was an intentional composition. I would have been on the other side, up on that bank, unless there was some obstruction. But you probably have so many shots like that so I can see going for something different.

It’s been a really long stretch since I’ve had a clear enough dark night to even shoot a deep sky object high in the sky.

3

Thanks Diane! This was one of the warmer February Milky Way shoots I’ve done, but warm is relative! It was -5°f this morning! Good call on the composition. I DID want to be up the hill from the road, but it was just breezy enough to move the grass. By moving farther away I was able to minimize the slightly blurring effect of the wind. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off the road all across the foreground, but it stitched well. I got lucky with a curved appearance that almost mimics the Milky Way.