POTW 27 Aug 2017

[sassan]

Not too many but a lot of quality images are posted in gallery during last week. The dark and deep sky is fascinating and the image titled "On to Eternity" by Nigel G, did the justice to be winner of this week.

Despite all our great achievements in life and advancement in all boundaries of science, one of the noticeable losses in our life is the lack of ability to look into beautiful dark sky due to significant light pollution we created. Our forefathers knew the sky a lot better than us and that was all because of the lack of electric light that has washed the sky above every major city in our world. Re-discovery of Milky Way and all that beautiful night has to show us is becoming a challenge night by night! So here is one beautiful feature of night that now a days or now a nights, is only visible when we travel far away from the city. In fact it is getting harder and harder to find a spot where milky way is visible and shame on us that forget to turn the lights off, when not needed or shield them from unwanted upward travel that constitutes "Light Pollution" and is a topic of different discussion.

It is always told that a great "Milky Way" image is one that synergistically enhances the Foreground and Nigel's image totally has it all. The composition is superb as the overhead milky way (That is a feature as we are approaching the month of September) extends and define the boundaries of what the title of image represents. The most beautiful and colorful part of milky way is beyond doubt, the center of it where a massive black hole exist and is the center around which entire milky way's stars rotate and by the way is the brightest portion. This is visible to us, the earth residents, in the section of sky that our forefathers named constellation Sagittarius and looking at the image, you see that right about the light of nearby city in the right lower corner of the image (South west of photographer). This termination of the milky way as shown in this beautiful image give a holy look and feel to the place below. The beautiful foreground though has a slight shift to magenta and not sure why (Possibly a combination of high ISO and post processing), is very well shown in this image as many photographer tend to turn the night into a day, by over exposing the foreground that though nice, drives the attention out of reality of night (When features of day are otherwise displayed). Nigel has especially done well with this, as shown in the image.

Its important to realize that Milky Way is still visible to all of us and if you haven't made an effort to picture it, may be this nice image of Nigel is a good inspiration and motivation to go forward and have a try to rediscover this wonderful but fading feature of our nights. Please don't let the large amount of data behind it frighten you as Milky Way is really out there and you don't need to know it all, to see and picture it. To spot it, all that is needed is a will to go to that dark place that has less light pollution at night, may be a desert, mountain or near by national park. I'll leave a Link to a very good tutorial to enhance you images as time goes but don't wait to learn it all over a night, but try to give Milky Way a chance.

LINK to Milky Way shooting
LINK to post processing of Milky Way.
LINK to a free and powerful software that shows you where to look for Milky Way in your location.
LINK to calendar of the event.
LINK to general information on subject.

[Nigel G]

Sassan - thank you for your choice of my image and your wonderfully descriptive comments. The foreground is heather in flower hence the magenta colouring - it was pure luck as I couldn't get where I had planned due to coastal fog and I was left to finding a spot on this heathland in the dark a bit in from the coast and I simply chose the tree to give me some sort of silhouette - the heather colours complimenting the sky were a bonus.

[graham harcombe]

Great shot Nigel and excellent choice Sassan. I enjoyed your narrative too!