Hunting for Milky Way: Uneditted Milky Way

Hi fellow Steemians, the following write up will be about taking Milky Way shot. I am obsessed with the beauty of the night sky since young. I always like to look at the sky and can keep wondering things beyond this universe. Wondering if there is anything outside this universe. There is a say. Things happen million light years away above the sky. We are actually looking at the history every night. Don't you realize that? Light year, means distance of light to travel in a year with the speed of light! That's very very very far away! As it happens and what reflects in our retina, actually, it could be many million years ago!

Taken at Kampung Monsopiad, Donggongon.

OK! Time's up for the story telling.
Some friends who share the same interest as me always wonder how do I take this kind of shot.

1. Well, first thing is, you have to look at the lunar calendar or do a quick browse on internet to check if today is the night without any moon! Of course, if you are refering to Chinese Lunar calendar, you may need to look for day 1 to day 4 or last 5 days of lunar calendar. In which, the moon illumination will be very very little. You can refer to the website below to check the moon phase.
   http://www.moongiant.com/

2. To take the milky way, it is best to avoid full moon and any light pollution at the area of your interest. In Malaysia, thanks to some of the rural areas with great landscape, you can actually find those places without any light pollution and you can watch the milky way just on top of your head! For example in Perlis, you have Wang Kelian, Chuping where you have a vast plain until the horizon. That is the perfect place to take milky way!

Posing with Milky Way

1. You may not see the milky way entire year. It appears only around April to August at the Equator. The rest of the year you may only see the tail of the milky way, instead of the brightest core of it.
   
   Taken in July 2016, Pantai Rekreasi, Mersing

2. Of course, regardless of any camera. You have to change your setting to manual setting, manual focus to infinity. Set your lens as wide as possible to capture the widest sky and the entire Milky Way! Aperture to be set to as big as possible, for example with my wide angle lens 17mm, I set the aperture to f2.8 which is available to the lens. Shutter speed wise, it can be varied, from 20 sec to 30 sec. Once you set more than 30 sec, the stars appear to be moving and it will render a very bad image, as if got a bit of star trail. In terms of ISO, you can set to 1600 or 2500, depends on your camera sensor capacity. Some of the camera sensor is not big enough and when you turn ISO to more than 2500, it starts to give you noisy image. Won't be good.

3. If you want to pose in the picture along with Milky way, please remember, do not move your body during the shot. This is because you are part of the image and when you move, it will have a blurry image in the picture, which you may look like a ghost. Hahahaa.....

Off focus at Pantai Pulau Mawar, Mersing.

Hope fellow Steemians find this useful. Thank you!