Sunday, July 23, 2017

Photos of the Day: My First-Ever Snapshots of the Milky Way...

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

As mentioned in this Blog entry I posted over a week ago, I drove back to Joshua Tree last Thursday to take my first-ever snapshots of the Milky Way. It was an interesting experience—gazing upwards and marveling at how this huge celestial wonder extends across the entire sky. Photographing our home galaxy was both fun and frustrating! Out of the almost 200 pics that I took on Thursday, only about 27 of 'em ended up being usable. And the reason for this is because my Nikon D3300 camera, for some odd reason, would take a nice crisp image in one instance and then a really blurry one the next. This is despite the fact that I didn't move the tripod or adjust the exposure settings on my camera for the subsequent shot. However, it didn't help that it was slightly windy when I was taking photos. I tried to shield my camera by standing between it and the wind multiple times during the night. It's too bad this was futile considering that the wind was coming from the direction of the Milky Way! Its brightest and most interesting part (the galactic core?), that is... The galaxy stretches across the whole sky, remember?

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

Anyways, I definitely want to head back to Joshua Tree to take more photos of the Milky Way. However, again, I need to buy a faster wide-angle lens that will allow me to take brighter and sharper snapshots of our galaxy...since the lens I used could only be adjusted to a low f-stop of 3.5, and I read online that f/2.8 is the aperture setting I really need to take a detailed pic of the Milky Way. That, and I need to keep my camera's noise reduction setting on next time. Live and learn. Enjoy some of these pics that I took last Thursday (those red streaks of light are airliners passing overhead), and I hope you had a great Sunday! That is all.

That gray wavy line is a moth that flew in front of my camera lens when I took this long-exposure snapshot of the Milky Way...on July 20, 2017.

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

That red and white streak of light is an airliner passing high above Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

The Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree National Park in California...on July 20, 2017.

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