Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BF Hammer" data-source="post: 791054" data-attributes="member: 48483">This is a marsh and lake on the edge of my hometown. Viewing over the lake to the east and southeast there is minor light pollution, but south and west is where the city is, so light polluted. The Milky Way on that date at the pre-midnight time frame is almost due south. That is from looking in Stellarium. Google Earth Pro (app, not the website) allows you to enter ground view pretty much anywhere on or off-street, and you can change the skies to any date-time. That can give a decent approximation of where to set up and look. The star constellations help more. Taking high-ISO long exposure test shots pinpoint the Milky Way. A single 25 second exposure is not enough in this condition. Light pollutions blows out the exposure for starters. The better solution is to increase the exposure time with stacking sub-exposures. Also at 15mm like I shot at, 25 seconds is close to a maximum number as star trails will start to be visible. 15 seconds has been a reliable number in darker skies for me.I did take 25 second exposures, and I used a single one of those to overlay the foreground part of the image. I can adjust the color balance and brighten it up to taste without affect in the stars that way. And I can stretch the stacked star/Milky Way image to maximize it's visibility in the final product.</blockquote>