Instead of our yearly kayak trip to the Pine River in western lower Michigan, we went up to our cottage because we got a bit tired of the Pine River and instead tried the Thunder Bay River. Also, we went to a couple other spots nearby and so everyone got a taste of a different area. We had great weather and I will post other pix but for now I am just posting a couple of night sky shots.
There were some clouds and a spit or two of rain but I'll post those later. For now, I'm posting two night sky shots with some clouds just moving thru. I thought it looked cool.

This is facing northeast about an hour after sunset. If you look hard you'll see a bright dot with some haziness on either side of it above center. That's M31, the Andromeda galaxy:



And due north. Polaris is above dead center and the Big Dipper is to the left. Can you make them out?



Thx for looking in...

The big dipper is a LOT easier to find in my sky because only a small fraction of the number of stars compete to be seen in my urban skyscape. Those are impressive photos.

great stuff - how did you do that?

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Don C
The big dipper is a LOT easier to find in my sky because only a small fraction of the number of stars compete to be seen in my urban skyscape.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes the light pollution can be so bad that it makes finding constellations difficult. I need to get up to the high desert in Nevada next winter.


Nice shots DP!

The reflection of the stars in the water looks like a mistake--they are so bright. Wonderful. We're going to be at the Grand Canyon in September/October and I understand that's a good place to see the Milky Way. So I'm going to try my hand at sky photos.

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Asheville, NC Area

Thx, all. I follow Russell Brown's tutorials and I have one downloaded that I refer to. I usually go to his website but it's being overhauled. I can send the mp4 tutorial to anyone that wants to give it a shot; however, it's for Photoshop and the adjustments to the images are done in Camera Raw.
I used my Canon 5D Mk. II with a 17-40mm lens set at 17mm. f4.5 at 20 seconds and the lens is set to infinity. Brown's tutorial has the exposures at 30 seconds but YMMV.
I can also send anyone higher rez images if you're interested.

Oh my gosh, these are so beautiful, thank you so much for posting them! I had forgotten how many stars can be seen in remote locales. I thought I was looking at a sci fi movie!

nice


[www.youtube.com]

Here's the Big Dipper and Polaris:

Very nice! It's rare I get to see a sky that dark.

Wow, great stuff!

Dave

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