Milkyway season: Find our galaxy

The constellation Scorpius is rising in the eastern sky after sunset. To find our galaxy, find Scorpius. The Milkyway can be found to the left of Scopious toward the lower half of the constellation. It will appear as a smoky band stretching in an arc across the heavens. For stunning views use a camera or phone. Set it on a tripod for a longer 10 second exposure. This will gather more light than the eye can see making the Milkyway come to life. Best settings are ISO 3200, shutter speed 10 seconds and a wide aperture which lets in more light. Later you can post process the image to bring in even more detail and clarity. I like to use Adobe bridge. I might need to increase the exposure ( make it lighter), then I play around with the white’s usually sliding it more to the right, Blacks slid more to left. Play with contrast, highlights and shadows buy sliding the bars to see what you like. Then save the file in a tiff and jpg. The tiff has more detail, and the jpeg has less info making it fine for social media sharing. Often tiff or dng files are too large to be shared on social media.

Do I need a fancy camera? Night photographers do love their DSLR’s or Mirrorless camera’s but I have to tell you the latest generation of cell phone images are blowing my mind. The night capabilities are amazing. We will see as I have a Google Pixel 8 pro arriving in a few days. Can not wait to try it out and share the results with you here. The next Amazing Maui Stars Sunset and Stargazing tour into Haleakala National Park will hopefully add more night sky images. Stay tuned!