Summer Milky Way

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Jul 18

2016

by project nightflight

Now is the time to go out at night and see the splendid Summer Milky Way. These days it stretches across the whole sky already by the end of the evening twilight. Our interactive full-sphere image shows how this looks from a truly dark observing site. The bright galactic center hovers above the pitch black volcanic landscape of La Palma island. The full band of the Milky Way is clearly visible as it crosses the zenith. Where the sky above the horizon isn't illuminated by the faint orange glow of Los Llanos the Aridane it sparkles with iridescent green airglow. The flashlight of a passing nighttime stargazer left a red trail on our nightscape image.

The image was shot on June 14, 2016, on La Palma island when we had to get up very early in the morning to catch this scene. The Theta S camera sat on an AstroTrac TT-320X AG tracking platform and was remote controlled via WiFi over a mobile device. We shot 50 individual exposures of 60 seconds at ISO 800 which we digitally combined later to obtain the colorful and noise-free result. To view more astronomical full-sphere panoramas made with a Ricoh Theta S go to http://www.project-nightflight.net/tests.html?29