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SpaceX Falcon 9 First Flight
http://www.launchphotography.com/Falcon_9.html
Copyright: Ben Cooper/SpaceflightNow.com



Milky Way Panoramic View - 200 Degrees
Copyright: Jens Hackmann Ring of Fire over the North Sea
Copyright: Stephan Heinsius
North America Nebula in Narrowband
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/11496571 ... cn7m-X3-LB
Copyright: Malcolm Park
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Hello,

I feel honoured that one of my images is discussed here. Owlice wrote me an eMail and asked if I want to tell some words about the idea and the creation of this image. So I do now

I always am fascinated by the diffuse band of milky way in northern summer months. I love the warm summer nights, sitting in the fields and gazing at the stars, only armed with some binoculars. Listening to the nightingale makes this even better than observing and photographing faint deepsky objects through a telescope. At least once in a season I try to capture the milky way. My goal is to freeze the moment with a terrestric motive in the foreground. So I decided to capture the milky way with the Weikersheim observatory, where I use to observe the skies. Weikersheim is a small town (7500 citizens) in southern Germany. it is settled right next to my hometown, Bad Mergentheim. In dark and clear nights, we have a fst 6.5m sky here or darker.

I've chosen a fisheye lens with 15 mm focal length in combination with a 1.3-crop dSLR. I fixed it on a mobile mount, a GP/E which I set in a crop field next to the observatory. The camera settings were:
2 Minutes exposure time at f= 15 mm and f/3.5 at an iso speed of 800. I thought that the entire sky and mood could not have been captured in one single image, I wanted to catch it all. So I've taken nine images with the intention to stitch it together to a big panoramic view.

During the exposure I thought Murphy was dead, because only one airplane flew through my field of view. Even a meteor stroke towards horizon, you can see it right above the observatory. I guess that its brightness was about -2 magnitudes.

After taking the nine images with 2 minutes time each I went home. I feeded the software with the image files and let my computer calculate the panorama the whole nights.

The result at the next morning was a 22.000 x 5.000 pixel image. I had to increase saturation and contrast and darken the background and that was it all. I scaled the image down and shared it to the world. Many people liked it and that's my biggest goal: to share my lovely moments below starry skies with other people around the world.

I hope you like the image and my short story.
Best wishes from Germany and clear skies!

Jens Hackmann
http://www.kopfgeist.com

PS: here's a bigger version of the milky way panorama:
http://www.kopfgeist.com/kram/mw0506.jpg

Best wishes,

Jens