Nightscapes

Trona Pinnacles

Trona Pinnacles is one of my absolute favorite places in the western United States. Just a few hours' drive from Los Angeles, this place is definitely worth a visit if you're in this corner of the world. It is for a reason that the striking scenery appears in movies such as "Battlestar Galactica", "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier", "Disney's Dinosaurs" or "Planet of the Apes". Even Lady Gaga shot her 2020 single "Stupid Love" in Trona Pinnacles. The radiant object on the left of the image is Mars. The brightest object in the Milky Way just to the left above M8 is Saturn.

My picture was taken in midsummer on a moonless night. Since it was pitch dark despite a great view of the Milky Way, I had to take care of the lighting of the rocks myself. The exposure time with a mirrorless full-frame camera (Sony A7R) was 3 minutes for the foreground. I captured the Milky Way with 10 images of 3 minutes each at ISO 400. For tracking I used the iOptron SkyGuider Pro. The stacking was done in PixInsight and the integration of the two shots in Photoshop.

This image also featured as “Astro Photo of the Week” in astronomie.de, the biggest internet site for astronomy in German language: https://www.astronomie.de/neuigkeiten//14-woche-die-milchstrasse-ueber-dem-planeten-der-affen/