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Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop), David J Roberts

Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop), David J Roberts

Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop)

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Description

This is a crop of a composite view of the isolated Zanskari village of Shade on the night of August 26, 2014. The village is at an elevation of 4240 m and was photographed from the Kamzang trekking campsite 0.5 km away. Shade is surrounded by the Zanskar mountains which are northeast of the Great Himalaya Range. I was halfway through a 23 day trek with Kamzang Journeys (kamzang.com) across the ancient kingdom of Zanskar.

The faint solar powered lights in the village were bright enough to highlight some of the houses, Buddhist chortens and barley fields. The prominent peak on the ridge directly above the chorten in the barley fields is Cho Gyumjang or Zhung Zhang, Shade's protective goddess. The snow capped peaks are 5590 m high and north of Phugtal Gompa, which is a two day trek from Shade.

The full image is a composite of 37 photographs: 5 of the village and mountains and 32 of the sky. All were captured with a Canon 6D and Sigma 35mm f/1.4. I used an AstroTrac for the sky photographs. Exposures for the village and mountains were 120s, f/1.4 at ISO 6400 and for the sky 30s, f/1.4 at ISO 1600.

RAW files of the sky were processed using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS6 using settings recommended by Roger N. Clark (www.clarkvision.com) who also gave me great advice on gear. Land and sky panoramas were assembled with PTGui Pro then combined using Photoshop. The full image is approximately 9,000 x 7,000 pixels.

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    Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop), David J Roberts
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Zanskari Village, Milky Way and Rho Ophiuchi (Crop), David J Roberts