The Daily Populous Wednesday October 12nd, 2022 evening edition
Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by chaka160

chaka160 on October 12nd, 2022 at 11:33 UTC »

I've been planning this particular shot for months, as it really needed a clear weather window to actually work.

I managed to get lucky after there had been a decent dumping of snow, so I made my way up to this alpine hut. It's extremely accessible and has some of the best night sky within NZ (minus the designated Dark Sky Reserve areas).

Here's the EXIF going over gear and settings to show how I took this:

Gear used: Nikon Z7 (stock), Nikkor Z 50mm f1.8S, Nikkor Z 14-24 f2.8S, Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro

Settings:

Foreground: 2 x 5 frames x 2 rows (roughly), each frame shot at 24mm, f/5, ISO3200, 100 second exposures. Stacked to reduce noise in Photoshop prior to merge in PTGui.

Sky: 16 frames x 3 rows (roughly), each frame shot at 50mm, f/2.8, ISO1600, 60 second exposures. Merged together in PTGui. PixInsight was used for processing.

Final touches in PS and Lightroom.

InquisitiveLenz on October 12nd, 2022 at 11:40 UTC »

😯 this is beautiful

Spoonmanners2 on October 12nd, 2022 at 12:19 UTC »

What is an alpine hut?