The Milky Way

Astrophotography has never been about what we can see with our eyes. The night sky, even on a clear night and far from civilization, is not bright enough for visual impact and for revealing what’s really out there. Deep sky photography by astronomers often involves hours for a single exposure so the light can accumulate on the digital sensor. Only when a celestial object appears much brighter than our eyes see it from Earth can we really appreciate its magnitude and drama. That’s why long exposures of the Milky Way are so powerful -- because they reveal detail that has been denied to mankind before photography. In this composite, I exposed the night sky from a mountain trail with a 16-35mm lens for 20 seconds at f/2.8 and 3200 ISO. I used the Canon 1Dx Mark II for the shot.  I set the white balance to tungsten so the Milky Way looked bluish, which I thought was more accurate, instead of yellow/brown as it would appear with daylight white balance. i then placed it behind the well-known Fitz Roy mountain.  Several hours earlier the Milky Way appeared behind the mountain, but I shot this at 5’oclock in the morning, four hours before sunrise here in Patagonia, and the galactic core was overhead.