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Saturday, May 30, 2020

Stargazing Series Part 1: Zion National Park in Utah

Milky way rising over the Bridge Mountain and the East Temple in Zion National Park
Bridge Mountain and the East Temple views , Zion National Park, Utah, 2019
This is the first part of the multi blog series on stargazing that I want to publish over time, covering my visits to national parks, in my chase to capture the milky way (our home galaxy) in so much detail.

Every single time when I see the milky white patch of the sky I am filled with amazement, we are very lucky to get to live on this rocky planet orbiting a mid sized star near a relatively quiet part of the galaxy, where we get a chance every night (barring clouds) to get a peek at what's out there. Some planets out there, are either tidally locked to their stars (similar to how the moon is tidally locked to earth) or some planets are simply too far away from their suns to sustain liquid water which is believed to be a key ingredient for life to survive. The stars in our galaxy themselves provide a window to the past around us, light coming from some of these stars left those stars thousands of years ago and when you step out on a starry night and glance up at these twinkling stars, some of those photons finish their thousand year journey by hitting your retina and registering a tiny twinkly light. To those of you who have never truly experienced a really dark sky, I must admit, the photos exaggerate , the camera is able to bring out more colors while our eyes or only capable of showing us a faint grey cloudy white smudge, we can barely make out the dust lanes, but let me assure you, the sheer planetarium effect of these thousands of stars do make up for the paleness of the milky way as seen with a naked eye, so I urge you to try it. Stargazing is very underrated as a tourist activity.
repost from my instagram post (You can checkout my latest instagram feed on the photography tab of my webpage).

Not convinced, heres another short taken before dawn at one of the gates of the park.

Entry Gates, Zion National Park, Utah

some detail on the technique and specs of the images.
I spent only a few minutes to capture both images (its a single shot taken with an exposure set to 15 seconds) and perhaps took an hour to process it in photoshop to bring out the colors and contrast.
EXIF: Single Shot• Sony A7rii + Samyung 14 f/2.8• 15sec • 12800 ISO


coming soon Part 2: Stargazing Series Part 2: Cherry Springs State Park, PA