The Backbone of the Night

It's hard to beat the view of the summer Milky Way under a clear dark sky. If you've never seen it, make plans to get away from the city to check it out, you won't regret it! The view of the noctilucent clouds was awesome but I think the most beautiful thing that I saw out at the remote observing site was a perfectly dark sky with the Milky Way blazing bright overhead.

The Milky Way (our home galaxy) makes a line across the sky because it's overall shape is a giant disk (100,000 light-years across) thick with stars. Our sun, and therefore our solar system and earth, are embedded in that disk of stars and so when we look out, along the disk, we see a dense band of stars. Our view is partially obstructed by intervening dust which gives the Milky Way it's 'chunky' look.

In this view we see the center of our galaxy just above the horizon. It takes on a yellowish hue because the core of our galaxy (and vicinity) is mostly occupied with older and cooler stars. As you move up, the star clouds take on cooler tones. Here we're looking across the spiral arms of our galaxy. The arms of spiral galaxies are normally home to intense star formation and thus include many young, hot, stars. See my shot of M51 to see an example of this coloring in a distant spiral galaxy. (The radiation from stars, and thus their color, can be roughly modeled as a blackbody. As an object heats up it starts to glow. First red, like an oven, but eventually getting 'white' hot as its peak radiation wavelength moves towards the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum.)

Anyway, where was I before I started geeking out? Oh yeah, so this panorama covers a large portion of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but it also includes the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to our own. It's located near the upper-left corner in this shot. The Andromeda galaxy is almost edge on from our point-of-view and is located about 2.5 million light-years away. (Think about that for a moment, the light falling on the sensor in the camera has been traveling through the universe, at the speed of light, for 2.5 million years...) The Andromeda galaxy is easily seen with the unaided eye under dark skies, get a star chart and try it sometime!

Technical details:
This image was created with 4 shots using my 11 mm (f/3.5) wide-angle lens. Each shot was 3 minutes long at ISO 1600. The camera was placed on my telescope mount (CGEM) so that the stars would not trail in the images. The field-of-view starts at the South horizon and goes up through the zenith and almost all the way to the North horizon.

View On Black

Comments and faves

  1. ★

    Gary Randall, ZameenZahari, purpleface, victorvonsalza, and 338 other people added this photo to their favorites.

  2. alpenglowtravelers (46 months ago | reply)

    WOW-this is out of this world

  3. Gary Randall (46 months ago | reply)

    I gotta git me one of them CGEM's.

    What an amazing shot Josh, and an excellent refresher course in the the basics of the Milky Way.

  4. Lumase (46 months ago | reply)

    Wonderful work, hat off...

  5. ZameenZahari (46 months ago | reply)

    amazing work...it makes us all feel so small :)

  6. marc valero (46 months ago | reply)

    Very nice picture Joshua.

  7. purpleface (46 months ago | reply)

    What a capture, this is amazing!

  8. Astrocatou (46 months ago | reply)

    good stuff,beats my morning newspaper !

  9. Matt Burrard-Lucas (46 months ago | reply)

    I bet this looks good full-size! Thanks for the info too..

  10. victorvonsalza (46 months ago | reply)

    Very cool composition with our galaxy and the Andromeda together, especially beautiful when viewed large on black.

  11. Christopher J. Morley (46 months ago | reply)

    Very, very cool. Great work.

  12. gfidias [deleted] (46 months ago | reply)

    splendid shot!

  13. Boyd Miller (46 months ago | reply)

    Simply Amazing,

  14. icecubephoto - trying to catch up (46 months ago | reply)

    Now THAT is a dark sky site!

  15. kern.justin (46 months ago | reply)

    I love your work - this is stunning!

    Seen on your photo stream. (?²ˣ)

  16. Chuck & Pat Harkins (46 months ago | reply)

    I love this stuff..super shots and good info.

  17. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    Wow! Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! I really appreciate the comments and I enjoy viewing each and every one of your photostreams.

  18. patricia harkins [deleted] (46 months ago | reply)

    It reminds me of when I go to eastrern Oregon late in the night. The stars are so bright when you get away from the city lights...just a super shot.

  19. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Gary:
    You don't need a CGEM to take wide shot like this, try googling 'barn door tracker' for a super simple setup that enables long exposure shooting for wide FOV.

    @Patricia:
    Someday I would love to take my setup out to Eastern OR, doesn't get much darker than that!

  20. astrometry.net (46 months ago | reply)

    Hello, this is the blind astrometry solver. Your results are:
    (RA, Dec) center:(294.62212068, 28.6151512713) degrees
    (RA, Dec) center (H:M:S, D:M:S):(19:38:29.309, +28:36:54.545)
    Orientation:-161.33 deg E of N

    Pixel scale:213.71 arcsec/pixel

    Parity:Reverse ("Left-handed")
    Field size :57.35 x 141.53 degrees

    Your field contains:
    The star Vega (αLyr)
    The star Altair (αAql)
    The star Deneb (αCyg)
    The star Polaris (αUMi)
    The star Caph (βCas)
    The star Eltanin (γDra)
    The star Sadr (γCyg)
    The star Gienah (εCyg)
    The star Alderamin (αCep)
    The star Tarazed (γAql)
    IC 1318 / gamma Cyg nebula
    NGC 6960 / Filamentary nebula / Lace-work nebula / Veil nebula
    IC 5068
    IC 5070 / Pelican nebula
    NGC 7000 / North America nebula
    IC 1396

    View in World Wide Telescope

    -----
    If you would like to have other images solved, please submit them to the astrometry group.

  21. steveturnerphoto [deleted] (46 months ago | reply)

    Dude - your clock-drive blurred the trees!... ;-) Really AWESOME shot here Joshua, and thanks for cosmic refresher!

  22. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Steve:

    Yeah, with these long wide-field exposures you either have to blur the stars or blur the horizon. Someday I'll save up for one of those awesome full frame cams that Nikon and Canon have and be able to get all this faint stuff in a much shorter exposure.

  23. Wilfried.B (46 months ago | reply)

    Superb milkyway, great job.

  24. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Wilfried.b:

    Thanks!

  25. mm767cap (46 months ago | reply)

    Wow, Josh. That is freaking awesome. I absolutely DIG your astrology work, and this is one of the best. Milky Way lusciousness.

  26. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Miles: Thanks! I'm totally digging the awesome landscapes you've been posting, nice work!

  27. Gary Randall (46 months ago | reply)

    Barn Door Tracker... I'm on it. : ) Thanks Josh. : )

  28. AdamsWife UK holiday coming up soon (46 months ago | reply)

    How magnificent.

  29. Justin Reznick (46 months ago | reply)

    Great shot Josh! I love the caption, I get to appreciate your photography and learn at the same time!

  30. 2lazy7 (46 months ago | reply)

    Awesome shot. I agree, there's nothing like being under a dark sky and staring at the milky way stretching across the sky.

  31. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @AdamsWife, @Justin, and @2lazy7:

    Thanks! I learned a lot putting this shot together and now I'm dying to go out and do it again and (hopefully) improve on this one.

  32. _Val W (46 months ago | reply)

    Excellence!!!!!!!!Love the night skies....

  33. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Val: Thanks!

  34. Alberto Expósito (46 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Panorámicas verticales, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
    Geopositioning necessary

  35. Phil's Pixels (46 months ago | reply)

    Incredible shot, and info Joshua. I like learning on Flickr and you are one of the premier teachers and guides. Kudos. Keep the your marvels coming.

  36. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Phil: Thanks!

  37. Thaozilla (46 months ago | reply)

    wow! i hope to see a sky like this before i die :)

  38. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @Thaozilla: Thanks! I certainly hope to see it more often than I do now!

  39. No_clever_names_left (Michael Lawrence) (46 months ago | reply)

    Impressive photography...and educational dialog...doesn't get much better than that. Wonderful image. We don't get too much of a dark sky here (40 miles east of Philadelphia). Love looking at these.

  40. Jim Patterson Photography (46 months ago | reply)

    This is so cool. Back in college, I took and then later helped with a basic astronomy course and we had to find a lot of the 'noted' items in this image. If I ever decided to try something like this, I hope you don't mind me hitting you up for a few questions.

  41. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    @No_clever_names_left: Thanks! I've always enjoyed astronomy as a hobby, there's so much to learn.

    @Jim Patterson: Thanks! Drop me a message any time if you want any tips, you shouldn't have any difficulty creating a shot like this, especially if you have access to a dark sky.

  42. kathy koch (Away for a while) (46 months ago | reply)

    This is stunning, Joshua. Beautifully created.

  43. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    Thanks Kathy!

  44. Kevin Flickr [deleted] (46 months ago | reply)

    awesome shot, been to cloudy to see anything here lately

  45. chrisw09 (46 months ago | reply)

    Wow - awesome!

  46. Joshua Bury (46 months ago | reply)

    Thanks Kevin and Chris!

  47. delaphotography (45 months ago | reply)

    Crazy cool...amazing image!
    gotta get me one of them CGEM's...

  48. Joshua Bury (45 months ago | reply)

    Thanks delaphotography! You don't really need a mount like a CGEM to do this though, that would be overkill, just happened to be what I had on hand.

  49. Mantis of Destiny (45 months ago | reply)

    Really really beautiful work. We live in the best galaxy in the world!!

  50. Joshua Bury (45 months ago | reply)

    @Mantis: Thank! You're sure right about that!

  51. Lumase (45 months ago | reply)

    Pure amazement.

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