I tried a little night photography from our beach, with the goal of getting the Milky Way and the Big Dipper in the same shot. When I downloaded this I spotted the trail of an airplane as well. Once back in Chicago, there is no night sky or stars of any kind that are visible to the naked eye, so this was really an end of summer treat. Hard to capture what it felt like under the stars. A lot better, more clear, on black.
I love this so much. When I was a child, my brother and I used to lie on the lawn at the front of our house and look at the stars. By the time I was at university, they had built the first section of a new motorway only a mile or two away with its orange lighting and it was never full dark again and I never saw the stars again. It is such a huge treat to see them, I love their vastness. I remember them from the middle of the desert near Alice Springs when we lived in Australia - the Southern Cross with no light pollution. Magical. Enjoy it, it is a wonderful thing.
I have tried this so many times when visiting family in NZ where they have skies just like this, no light pollution at all. I fail dismally so I admire greatly this shot. Fave. The sky is so beautiful on its own like that.
Absolutely gorgeous! When we lived in north central Pennsylvania back in the 1990s we could see skies like this (even saw the Hale-Bopp comet!), but by the early 2000s, those horrible orange lights had crept out into the country side and it just wasn't the same. I want to visit one of the "Dark Skies" parks just to experience that again...
Amazing shot. Fav. Here we only see one or two stars - my friends say that it is because there is too much lighting (street lights ect.) to disturb the vision.
@bernicrumb It's really impressive when towns agree to be 'dark' but so few are doing that. In Chicago, there are zero stars to be seen ever! I'm impressed you could see the comet!
This is such a fabulous image, Taffy -- and to think it was outside your house, only steps away, for 27 years! Another reason for me to get to Beaver Island again . . .
My dream is to one day be able to take a shot like this! Absolutely beautiful. We can see some stars here but to see them like this you have to travel further out from where I live.
