The Dying Light
The nebulas in the Orion constellation (sky left) and the Vela supernova remnant (sky right) dominate the night skies over an empty, unnamed lake just west of Lake Perkolilli near Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The Large Magellanic Cloud shines like an electric ball at the very right, and some of the smaller nebulas make an appearance - such as the California (very left, just under the Pleiades star cluster) the Carina nebula (lower right).
This isolated lake needs a 4wd to get to, and there are no roads leading to it, so took a little pushing past bushes and shrubs to finally get this lake all to myself. Alas, the light pollution from the nearby mine site of Kanowna Belle pretty much ruined my deep sky shots that I took later on in the evening - so I can't recommend this lake for those hunting really dark skies.
Whilst on first glance this image appears reasonable, I made a few rookie mistakes which kind of spoils it. In a rush to get to doing deep sky shots I started taking this multi-panel panorama exactly at astronomical twilight. But with long exposures the light is still changing as seen by the camera, and you can see the slightly different shaded frames in the middle of the image. Also, I knocked the focus ring halfway through the image resulting in the stars in the middle of the image being a bit blurred (fortunately, the large panorama reduces the impact of this a fair bit).
Well, on the plus side the pattern of the lake came out and the image is not totally unpleasing to the eye...
| IMG_0886 | 2019-12-28 | Unnamed lake near Perkolilli, Western Australia | EOS6D modified | Canon 50mm f1.2 lens | @f/2.8 | UV/IR cut-filter | ISO3200 | 30s | 49 x panels | Skywatcher StarAdventurer mount |
