At 13,796' Mauna Kea is one of the worlds best locations for astronomy. The summit is home to the world’s most powerful telescopes. Lasers are being emitted from the Gemini North and Keck 2 telescopes. The 20w lasers help cancel out the effect of the atmospheres on their detectors. These telescopes produce results that rival Hubble.
You can clearly see the edge on outline of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Even though every star you can see at night is within it, most of its 400 billion stars are blocked by dust and gas. Also, looking like a bright start ‘below’ the galaxy is the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter.
Mauna Kea is located on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Telescopes from left to right: Keck, IRTF, Canada France, UH88, UKIRT. They might only look like smudges in this images but trust me; they are the best on the planet.
Nikon D50
ISO 1600
Nikkor 7.5mm Fisheye 5.6
627.3 second exposure
Home made star tracking platform
Editing:
Dark Frame Reduction
Levels
Curves
Dodge/Burn
Contrast
Selective de-saturation
Statistics
Place: 12 out of 46 Avg (all users): 6.4594 Avg (commenters): 7.4815 Avg (participants): 6.1852 Avg (non-participants): 6.4796 Views since voting: 2315 Views during voting: 1027 Votes: 394 Comments: 32 Favorites: 2 (view)
Kewl. Did you use a barndoor? I had the pleasure of taking the stargazing tour on Mauna Kea... wow, talk about dark skies. 10,000 feet altitude helps too.
I can't wait to read the details about this image. The extreme fisheye view is aptly correct in displaying our meager perspective of the immeasurable that surrounds us... and those lasers are just too cool.
This is a little confusing. The laser lights are great, but I don't really understand the fish-eye look through what appears to be an elongated, distorted tube.
I would have given it a 10 except FOR the lasers. Interesting for sure but it for me, I think a better crop of just the Milky Way would have blown all the others out of the water. As it stands, I'll go with an 8.
Cool! Thought I might say something about the crop, but you will have had your reasons for going like this. Anyway, the sky is amazing, and the lasers obviously give the edge.
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