Hi Everyone,

Here is one of my favorite shots, I took this shot from Copper Mountian Colorado, while at the Astronomical Leagues 50th Anniversary Convention in 1997.

I found a meadow a little south of Copper Mountain, near a mining operation,
that was at an altitude of 11400 ft.

Sorry, no jogging at this altitude! It takes longer to do things too!

I used my Pentax 6x7 medium format camera and 90 mmm lens to capture 4 seperate shots on ISO 400 PPF 120 Film, 30 minutes each for the 2 hour total panoramic view showing Scorpius through Cygnus. All the bright nebulae and star clusters are visible.

Taken July 4, 1997, I took 4 shots overlapping about 15% of each field along the galactic plane.

The 6x7 negatives were scanned recently with a Nikon coolscan 9000, for 500+megabyte file each image.

I did not have the computer resources back in 1997, so was not able to do anything with the negatives until I recently upgraded my PC and Ram. I managed to stitch together the 4 shots for this 2+ Gigabyte file.

It still took 20 minutes to save the high resolution 2 gigabyte file.

An oval tool was used to crop out the jagged edges of the film for athetics after orientation and aligning and level balancing one shot to the next in Adobe Photoshop.

It looks awesome as a hard copy photographic 16x40 and 32x80 print.

This was my first attempt at a wide field Northern Hemisphere Panorama of our Home Galaxy!

I only wish I had skies like this every night where I live.

Now its time to try the southern hemisphere.

Attached Images

milkywaypanorama.jpg (78.8 KB, 7 views)

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

WOW!!! :-)
Do you have the file on the website somewhere? (even lower resolution would be great)
Bojan

Very nice shot, I love widefield milkyway shots.

__________________
Mike
. 10" GSO Dob
. 11x70 Binos
. IceInSpace - Aussie/NZ astro website and community forums
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/logo.jpg

Yes, there is a little higher resolution file of it at my website, its a little bigger than what can be displayed here at Universe Today.

When you get to my website click the Big G or framed and unframed prints link.

This will take you to my front page showing the Milkyway shot under specials.

I have just recieved a bunch of e-mails from folks wanting to buy a print of this image from me after seeing it posted........Its really low cost for Universe Today forum members only. The Super discount is not listed on the website. Just e-mail me....

Subject : milkyway panorama 8"x20"

I'm travelling to Exhibit at a Fine Art Show right now, so will not be able to answer e-mails until probably thursday evening the 10th.

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

try it w/o 'ovalisation'---please---from maui many glimpse the actual outer arms---defining a spiral---the trick seems to tip your head to the MW's plane---then, wow!!!!!!---and it's free-------

superb image.
funny thing it didnt look as good on my monitor at work..i come home and it blows your socks off
monitor settings can sure ruin an excellent image