Broken Hill's Night Sky

No visit to the outback would be complete without a trip out of town at night to see the sky. We drove maybe three minutes out of Broken Hill (north, toward the Living Desert State Park for those of you with a map in your hand). In about 40 minutes, here's what I got.



It was a dark night with no moon. But there did seem to be plenty of shooting stars. You'll notice that the horizon looks a little odd. This is my first time, so things are not yet practiced to look smooth. The road is lit by starlight.

The above photos are made with a 24 mm lens and the two below are made with a 14 mm lens. They are made looking, more or less, straight up at the milky way, somewhere vaguely near its center. All these images are stacks of three or four images each taken at 15 - 20 seconds at ISO 800. The 24 mm lens was set at f1.4 and the 14 mm at f2.8. The next image is the average of the images.

The image below is the sum of the images. Now you begin to see the dust that obscures portions of the milky way. There are actually two galaxies in the image below.

How cool is all this!? Perhaps we can find a way to continue in Stewarton.