Galaxy Field Trip, Caples Lake near Kirkwood, California along State Route 88 ​

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The days during summer months are best for photographing the Core of the Milky Way. During early summer at our latitude, 38.7 degrees, the Core is visible early in the morning, and late summer it’s visible after sunset. On July 30, Galaxy visibility started during nautical twilight, shortly after 21:00.

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All galaxy photos were taken as follows. On a sturdy tripod, a series of at least 10 images was taken of the Milky Way. Then at least 3 dark images were taken to record no-light sensor noise – a black hat in front of the lens for these works well. The characteristics of all cameras differ. A wide-angle lens and the best results were an ISO between 3200 and 6400 with a shutter speed between 8 and 10 seconds. At 13 seconds, some oval stars could be seen. This is dependent on the focal length of the lens.

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Everyone packed up and left at about 23:00. At this location, it was very dark, and at just over 7,800 feet in elevation, very, very cold. A flashlight was needed.

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Post processing was done with an astrophotography software program, DeepSkyStacker. The sky images are “stacked” meaning that they are aligned and pixel-by-pixel averaged. The dark images are similarly averaged and used to correct the sky images for sensor irregularities (hot pixels, fixed patterns, etc.). Some additional processing was done but this is a topic for a future tutorial.

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There is a good reference, "Milky Way Photography: The Definitive Guide (2019)" by PhotoPills. It’s a plug for PhotoPills, but is free and informative.

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My favorite photo of the evening, shown below, was taken at 21:40, during astronomical twilight, when there was still a slight bluish color to the sky. I screen-grabbed a page from https://www.timeanddate.com showing planets and constellations and superimposed the image onto my photo using layers in Affinity Producer. Using the Pen Tool, dashed lines were added to a layer.

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