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In the depths of the Southern hemisphere nights, we noticed two bright eyes staring at us. Their celestial presence pierced the darkness, drawing us into contemplating the mysteries of the universe. These are the Magellanic clouds.
-- Location
We created this one in June 2023 in the cold winter of the Atacama desert. The temperature was below the freezing point and I can still feel it in my bones. It was cold.
-- Context
We noticed the Magellanic clouds six years ago not that far from here (in Bolivia) and we kept capturing these galaxies, but always combined with the Milky way. This time, we wanted to make them shine on their own.
The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere. They are named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who observed them during his voyage around the world in the early 16th century.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 160,thousand light-years away from Earth and is roughly 14,thousand light-years in diameter. It contains several hundred million stars. The Small Magellanic Cloud is about 200,thousand light-years from Earth and is smaller than its counterpart.
Both galaxies are gravitationally bound to the Milky Way and are considered satellites of our galaxy, which means they orbit around it. They are prominent objects in the southern sky and have been studied extensively by astronomers due to their proximity and relative ease of observation.
-- Technique
This is a typical circle and as you can guess, I used a frozen salami piece (no video footage available) to make sure my circle was… round. The way we capture the night sky & the light-painting within a single image is something we learned over the years. I always expose for the background and do the light-painting quickly within that exposure. My exposure time is normally 8 seconds for these shots, but I wanted to grab more details in the night sky, so I went to 15 seconds. Now that’s a bit risky as no one can stay still for that long, especially at minus 5 degree celsius. So I tried something a bit unusual. I set my second camera to 4 seconds, which would be enough to capture the light-painting and keep a much better quality. That means a bit more editing, but the end result is so much better. That doesn’t change a thing if you look at the picture on a smartphone, but for a large print, it is quite satisfying to get to that level of details.
-- Challenges
This is the Atacama desert in Chile. It is so cold at night, but the main challenge is to figure out a great composition to total darkness. I scout with no flashlight and I simply look at the overall composition of the stars in relation to the rocks that are in front of me. When I see something potentially interesting, I ask Kim to go in the scene and then I quickly test my framing by doing short exposures at super high iso.
-- Tool
As usual with the stars, my flashlight was set on a very low brightness. I used a Solid Pinkish tube. I love using this color on these brownish rocks. We did an additional shot for the foreground using the same tube (Kim holding the tube, pointing up)
-- Settings
Wide: 14mm, f1.8, ISO 3200, 15 sec (2 seconds for the light-painting), White balance 3200k
Close-up: 50mm, f1.2, ISO 1600, 4 sec
July 19, 2023, 4:48am
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28 апр 2024