Carina Beyond the Dunes

A walk of 30 minutes into the dunes near Wedge Point and the landscape is wonderfully empty except for the flowing sands and the skies above. It was a hard slog, and unfortunately this was a failed session - my tracking equipment stopped working (sand?). I only got this initial image from the very beginning when the sun had recently gone down and the moon still in the sky. My plan was to catch the galaxy setting in the west over the dunes - oh well, there will be other times.

I used an Skywatcher StarAdventurer sky tracking mount to take this 3x3 panel mosaic (although cropped and roughly a 3 x 2). A Canon EOS6d (modified) was used through a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens stopped down to f/3.2. All camera and lens settings were kept the same for all panels, and all shots were taken one immediately after the other. The tracking mount was used for the sky and turned off for the foreground panels. Stitching in PTGui, colour balance, noise reduction, saturation and some brightness / contrast adjustment in Photoshop.

| 2018-09-15 | Near Wedge Point, Western Australia | EOS6D modified | Canon 50mm f1.2 lens | @f/3.2 | UV/IR cut-filter | ISO3200 | 30s | 9 x panels | Skywatcher StarAdventurer mount |