Centaurus and the Milky Way, Aoraki Mt. Cook, 2024
The Centaurus constellation was shining extraordinarily bright that night under the Aoraki Mt. Cook, so I couldn't resist and pointed my Nikon astro-camera equipped with my fastest wide lens wide open at f/1.4. I shot 16 exposures of 90s at ISO 1600. I am so lucky that I got clear night sky that night for a couple of hours and managed to capture this brilliant star light and cosmic ocean of gas and dust of our Milky Way galaxy. It was processed with traditional methods of calibrating the light frames, aligning them and stacking them using PixInsight. Photoshop was used for colour balance mainly and final touches.
Tech Card
Date / Location
8th February 2024, Aoraki Mount Cook, New Zealand, Bortle Class 1 ~SGM: 22.00 mag./arc sec2
Equipment
Camera: Nikon D810A
Lens: Sigma Art 40mm f/1.4
Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer
Image Quality
14 bit RAW (NEF)
Exposure time per image / number of composites and sensitivity
16 x 90s ISO 1600 f/1.4
Total Integration Time
24 mins
Software
PixInsight 1.8 Core
Photoshop
DEEP SKY
STARSCAPE
SOLAR SYSTEM
EVENTS
