Here in the South, the milky way starts showing up in the early part of June until late October. So I naturally, on moonless nights break out the old camera and try to capture pictures of it.
Now I’m not great, and I am sure if I practiced with Photoshop and or Lightroom I could make these pictures better but the truth is, why would I want to post pictures that have been edited.
These pictures are what I see when I photograph the night sky here in Shelby Alabama.
The first picture is a higher iso about 6400 with a shutter speed of 20 seconds the neighbors stupid streetlight washes out alot of the image but you can faintly see the milky way.
The above picture is 1600 iso and 20 second shutter speed the brownish color on the trees is the result of the neighbors street light, the blue and green colors are a result of my fountain in the front yard.
Same setting as before. The camera I am using is a NIkon D3300 with the 18-55 kit lens attached.
My goal is to eventually purchase a 12mm 1.8 or less lens and find a good dark sky spot.
Unfortunately here in Alabama dark skies are getting harder and harder to find.
So for now I will settle for sitting in my driveway and taking pictures like this.
One thing about it looking at one of the tendrils of our galaxy makes me realize that we are just one tiny speck in a group of trillions of stars and light years of dust clouds.
When you think of how many galaxies there are in our universe, one can’t help but think there is no possible way we are alone.
In our galaxy (even though there is no way to accurately measure it) there is an estimated 4 trillion stars. In all these stars there is an estimated 398 billion solar systems. So the odds are that there are at least 398 billion planets in the habitual zone of their stars (suns).
Odd are very likely there is other life forms out there and the simple fact they don’t try to communicate with us proves they are probably intelligent.
If you have any thoughts on this I would love to read them in the comment section.
Very Gorgeous!