Milky Way: border of the Navajo Reservation, Arizona

It was while working on Beyond the Blue Horizon that I really started to look at the night sky. Being with Polynesian navigators made me look at the night sky a whole new way, it is a map that can tell you where you are in the world.

While I liked some of the night sky images that I made on the story, I knew that with some work and planning I could do better.

The Navajo Reservation outside Flagstaff Arizona is dark and the air is very very clear. I arrived there near the new moon so that the sky would be extra dark. The camera is attached to an equatorial mount that tracks the earth's rotation. The stars stay sharp in this 6 minute exposure while the hills in the distance blur with movement.

The stars are so bright there that I felt like I could fall into the sky.

Stephen Alvarez

Canon EOS 5d 24mm 1.4 lens 6 minute exposure

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Comments

[Psycho]

That's an amazing image, Stephen. Did you have to do anything special to enhance the vividness of the nebulae or is it really that bright there?