Have you ever noticed the Milky Way? It is estimated that about 80% of Americans can no longer see the arc of the spiral arms of our local galaxy due to worsening environmental pollution, but this rarity is interesting to look for and capture with the camera.
Travel photography blog Capture the Atlas has just launched its fifth edition of its annual Milky Way Photographer of the Year, a collection of the 25 images of the Milky Way.
Here are 10 of the contest’s top photographs, which includes photographs created in 12 countries, as well as comments from Dan Zafra, editor-in-chief of Capture the Atlas, which organizes the contest.
“Part of the thrill of photographing our galaxy is capturing a subject with many details, colors and textures that are completely visual to the human eye,” Zafra said. “Our vision is very bad at night, we can see light and dark. Nebulous yet our vision has not evolved to see the colors or all the main points that our cameras can capture. “
“Seeing our Milky Way photographed on the back of the camera screen is a very moving delight for top photographers, and the ability to see our MW in other positions and angles based on latitude and hemisphere makes it even more exciting. “
All of those photographs were painstakingly created using star trackers and multiple exposures, but there are easier tactics to do this, though you’ll want a handheld camera on a tripod. “For anyone photographing the Milky Way for the first time, the basics of photographing or around the new moon and staying away from sources of mild pollutants would propose the following configurations,” Zafra said. So here it is:
“In addition, a wide-angle lens with a fast aperture makes a big difference, regardless of the camera model,” Zafra said.
“17 of the 25 photographs featured in this year’s edition were taken with a star tracker, whereas until a few years ago we never saw more than two or three photographs tracked on the list,” Zafra said. A star tracker tracks Earth’s rotation, so instead of scrambling as they move through the evening sky, the stars remain perfectly sharp. This allows photographers to take ultra-long exposures of the mode discussed above to capture more detail, color and overall quality of their photographs,” Zafra said.
Cameras modified with stars have become very popular in recent years. A camera in astro mode is a camera whose low-pass cleaning was removed from the sensor and replaced with another cleaning that blocks UV and IR light but allows for smoother transmission, especially at fast color wavelengths depending on the clearing. “The most popular for astrophotography is the clear h-alpha (hydrogen-alpha) that captures red cloudiness in certain areas of the night sky,” Zafra said. You can see it in several of the photographs of the Milky Way presented here.
The common confidence is that those modifications are made just to capture the colors in the nebulae,” Zafra said. “However, the biggest merit of Astro-mod cameras is the ability to capture more light, which translates into sharper photographs with less virtual. “noise. “
Do they make the Milky Way seem unrealistic?”In my opinion, those filters don’t make this unrealistic, they just capture everything our eyes can’t yet see that’s in the night sky,” Zafra said.
The main trends are the use of star trackers and cameras in Astro mode. “However, the generation is evolving and we are seeing a big trend towards automating astrophotography,” said Zafra, who is lately testing a device called Benro Polaris that can automate other processes. , adding polar alignment, panoramas, and exposure time tracking. “I think in the long run it leans towards automating all technical steps and leaves more room for the artistic component of the astrophotograph,” Zafra said.
“Other trends are more similar to Milky Way destinations or astrotourism,” Zafra said. “The main destinations where astrophotographers will photograph the night sky are La Palma and Tenerife in the Canary Islands in Europe, the US national parks. , and the Atacama region in South America. “
They are also the 3 most sensitive positions on the planet for the largest telescopes in the world. This is no coincidence.
There are endless places to do astrophotography where few people have photographed the Milky Way. “The examples in North America come with public lands outside of national and state parks, which are less congested,” Zafra said. “A clever example here is the BLM grounds on the east side of the California Sierra or national monuments like Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah. “
Zafra also mentions otherworldly places for adventurous astrophotographers like the Peruvian Andes. “You can see our Milky Way at higher altitudes without and without mild contaminants,” he said. “Other regions of Africa, Australia and New Zealand also offer exceptional opportunities for original photographs of the Milky Way. I highly recommend checking the maps of mild pollutants and doing some online studies to locate some of those areas.
One of Zafra’s favorite places for Milky Way photography is Death Valley National Park. “This is a large national park, with miles of beautiful scenery and prominent elements that offer the opportunity to locate original compositions while being accessible,” he said. also one of the most productive places to photograph the panoramas of the Milky Way, as there is nothing to block your view on the horizon. “
The timing of the Capture The Atlas festival is not the same, as the end of May is at the height of the Milky Way season, when it is less difficult to see it depart from any of the hemispheres (although it can be seen from February to October in the north). hemisphere and from January to November in the southern hemisphere).
I wish you a transparent sky and big eyes.