Interesting Photo of the Day: Milky Way Over Australia

Astrophotography  •  Interesting Photos

An incredible amount of time and effort goes into planning and executing astrophotography. For images such as this one, multiple exposures need to be stitched together in post processing to create such a large, high definition photograph. Before setting out late at night, you must study the meteorological and geographical conditions to ensure that the stars will be out and the weather will be desirable. The foreground can be as important as the Milky Way, so you also have to choose an appealing location. Next, make sure your settings and focus are on point or the whole process could be ruined! In the end, if everything goes right and your editing achieves the desired end result, you will end up with a beautiful image like this one:

“Milky Way over Harvey Dam in Western Australia” by Trevor Dobson (Via Reddit. Click image to see full size.)

Photographer Trevor Dobson captured this stunning image of the Milky Way over the Harvey Dam in Western Australia. He used a Nikon D5100 camera with a 35mm prime lens. His settings were 10 second exposures at ISO 5000 and an f/1.8 aperture. In order to compile this massive image, he used 53 shots stitched together with photo editing software designed to do so, such as Microsoft Image Composite Editor and PTGui. Other editing was done in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to make adjustments including contrast, white balance, and noise reduction for each individual shot. The end work is the great payoff. Just look at that detail and color!