Capturing good pictures of the Milky Way in Florida can be quite a challenge. Rain, clouds, fog, insects, and bright moonlight are a part of life here. Did I mention snakes? Alligators? Lighthouse ghosts? “Area X”?
This year I had made several attempts to frame good shots with the bright galactic core near terrestrial objects, without much success. As the season progresses the Milky Way gradually moves to the west and the galactic core moves to the south. With the passing of the autumnal equinox in September, it looked like I would not get good images this year.
In late October a cool front left us with a couple of days of clear weather, so on Sunday October 20th I went to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge to take some pictures.
I had checked the location of the Milky Way with the Astronomy program “Stellarium” and saw it was in a reasonably good sky location. I also noticed that before sunrise the next morning the moon would be rising in the east. Moonlight is usually not good for Milky Way photography, but it is great in small doses for regular night shots because it illuminates the landscape without overpowering the stars.
My night photo session yielded several good images, and the next morning I returned just before moon rise and caught a few more interesting images.
The two images of the Milky Way were each stacked from 6 individual time exposures. Stacking reduces sensor noise and removes satellite, airplane, and boat light trails. Automatic removal of anthropogenic light trails is a real blessing, considering the increasing light pollution in Florida.
If you look at the image of the lighthouse below you will notice a fuzzy “star” near the right of the hand rail. That is the Andromeda galaxy which can be seen easily with binoculars.
Jim