Capturing the Milky Way

Photo Credits: YANXIN WANG

Hey guys! Next week will be our Finals, and our schedule is very hectic. So I'm going to post now before I forget, again. Last October 8, the "Blood Moon" phenomena occurred. I went outside to check it out. Ilocos Norte was one of the places that was lucky enough to have an unobstructed view of the celestial phenomenon. What I saw was more beautiful. The Moon was in the East (from where we are). I went outside to the west first. I noticed that there weren't any clouds present, and I could see more stars than I could see before. Then I went to look for the moon. There it was, in all of it's glory, disproving that it's made of cheese. Then I went back to look at the stars instead. I took time to just stare at the sky, because it's so beautiful. I can't help to think that I'm actually looking at the past! 

Looking in the past because what we see when look at the stars are the light emitted by them years ago. #Fact. As I gaze upon the marvelous sky, my eyes started adjusting to the darkness, and what I saw startled me. OMG IT'S THE MILKY WAY GALAXY! At first, I thought it was just a cloud, but then I came to realize that it wasn't moving. I quickly went inside and get the camera. Took some test shots to make sure it was perfect. I don't know when I will be able to have an opportunity like this. 

This is how I managed to get this amazing shot, despite living in the city where light pollution can be a problem. Thankfully, we live beside the highway. So there's the city on one side, and fields on the other, so light pollution wasn't that too much of a problem, especially if the position of the object I'm photographing is located to the west. I took this photo facing south. You can clearly see some lights coming from the bottom left part of the photo, because there's a billboard there. 

Final Photo. It was enhanced a bit to show  the Milky Way. Click image for larger view.

I was able to take this shot using only some basic equipments. First, a camera that can take long exposure photos; I used a Canon 600D. Second, a sturdy tripod. Third, a clear view of the sky and minimal light pollution. That's it. I also installed Magic Lantern on my camera a few months back, but this is purely optional. However, it is useful for taking exposures longer than 30 seconds. Magic Lantern has a lot to offer, it enables the user to take photos longer than 30 seconds without the need for additional hardware or accessories.

To focus on the sky, specially the stars at night can be a bit tricky. To achieve a nearly perfect focus, try focusing on something like lights from a distant house. There were houses about 50-60 meters from where I was and I used them to manually focus the lens. (Try searching for Hyperfocal Distance) 

I used the kit lens (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II) since it's the only lens I have. :( Turned it all the way to the widest focal length which is the 18mm, and automatically the camera adjusted the aperture to it's largest value, f3.5. 

For the ISO, I just guessed it. I used 800 ISO first but I was not satisfied by the look, so I went up. Remember that the higher the ISO speed, the more noise you'll introduce to your image. I finally settled down at around 1250 ISO. Again, this is a feature of the Magic Lantern firmware. 

Lastly, I used RAW. If you don't know what it is, [CLICK HERE] or just do some google search. RAW is the best quality your camera can capture, because it's capturing the raw data. By the way, JPEG is a type of compression, so the image data captured is actually reduced. Plus, you can have more control over your image in post if you use RAW. 

Here are more information on my settings:

Settings I used in capturing the image. 

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This is the RAW image processed and converted into JPEG.

Click Image for Larger view.

As you can see, the Milky Way isn't that much visible. Since I'm still a newb on post processing images, I duplicated it and just fiddled with the software that came with the camera, the Digital Photo Professional. Adjusted brightness and what not, and came up with this:

Click Image for Larger view. 

After that, I opened up an Image Manipulating program, (GIMP), put the two images together with the RAW file in the bottom and the adjusted image on top of that. I changed the layer blending mode of the adjusted image to Overlay and finally came up with the final photo.

Thanks for viewing! This is all I have for now, right now, I have to concentrate on my academics since the semester is ending. Hopefully, I can pass all of my subjects. If you are interested in photographs like these, try searching Astrophotography. And also, download pdf's about photography, specially the Digital SLR Photography e-Mags. They contain a lot of information and they have commentaries about pictures sent to them by readers. Definitely check them out. Also, if you're beginning photography, I would also recommend to take time to read Photography Core Fundamentals and Trick Photography and Special Effects, both by Evan Sharboneau. Till then, and Cheers to the exams!

PS. If you're going for astrophotography, check out Star Chart. It's an app that is a chart for stars. Lol it's a very useful app, it uses the gyros sensor? on your device to locate a certain celestial body. You can use it to find the Milky Way and point your camera at it. Cheers!