This could easily have been named the shot that almost didn't happen. I will try not to bore the audience with everything leading up to this, but suffice to say it was not only a long distance to this distance-wise but also difficulty-wise.
The backstory is summarized as follows:
- Ever since our big trip to Australia was on the books I knew I wanted to shoot something under the Southern Skies.
- My initial ideas had me taking some sort of a tracking head/mount and maybe even a dedicated astro camera. Those ideas did not survive the draconian luggage size/weight restrictions of our Australian domestic flight carriers.
- Eventually, I was reduced to just bringing a dedicated nightscape lens and then using my R5 and travel tripod that I was already bringing. Even then, in order to have my camera bag meet the carry-on weight restriction my lovely wife had to agree to carry one of my lenses in her carry-on luggage. Yes, I am a lucky guy who married very well
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- The trip was carefully planned to have us at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park during the period of the new moon. I figured we could get to the park one of our 3 nights there and stay late and get the type of nightscape I was after.
- Once there a few problems cropped up:
- All of the hotels and other infrastructure outside the park were 20 km away from the entrance. This is a detail I could have and should have known prior but failed to notice.
- My wife tore her meniscus in her right knee just walking up some steps the very first day we arrived at the area. Initially, she could not walk at all, but eventually on the 2nd day with a knee wrap and crutches she was able to get around somewhat, and by the 3rd day she could walk short distances without assistance (but it was not at all comfortable...)
- The park closed to the public every night at 8 pm! Oh my, now THAT's a problem...
- After all that I found out that there was an astro tour that could be booked that was allowed in the park after hours. I was very fortunate to find an open spot on the last night before we left the area to continue our trip elsewhere. My wife Claudia due to her knee problem had to miss out on the tour which was disappointing.
- Once in the park, the tour guide was very good, but of course the focus of the tour was for those with little knowledge of the night sky, so for the first 45 minutes he was explaining the motion of the stars, and pointing out certain constellations. We were under a jaw droppingly dark sky and I wanted to go setup and try to capture something but I could not interrupt the presentation. At that point it was not clear if I would be able to shoot any of my own images or not.
- Fortunately I HAD mentioned that I wanted to shoot some of my own nightscape stuff and when the group transitioned to looking through some set up scopes at things like Jupiter and such I was finally allowed to go outside the area a little bit and set up and try to capture something. I was pretty rushed as I was not sure how much longer I might have.
So under those conditions I managed to capture this composite shot. This is made from four 15 sec ISO 6400 images for the sky and one 2 minute ISO 800 image for the foreground and Uluru, all shot at 15mm, f/2 (wide open) with the Laowa lens I brought as a nightscape lens. In retrospect I could have used a longer exposure for the foreground, but there were lots of folks wandering about with lights on the periphery and I just couldn't get a clean shot that was much longer under the time constraint I was feeling.
In the end though, I wanted a quintessentially Southern Sky image, and I think with both the Magellanic Clouds and Uluru in the shot this certainly qualifies on that score. The processing was a little challenging, but I think came out OK. The green I think is airglow, but not sure about the red. It doesn't look like light pollution, and indeed looking to the Southeast as I was there is nothing at all for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers besides maybe a few indigenous settlements with no roads to get to them. I do not think it is a processing artifact though in any case.
Comments and critiques most welcome, as always...
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