The Heavens Above

Don't go crying wolf just yet... I am admitting to this being a composite from the get go. My general rule is that I will not composite images taken in different locations but this is one exception I had to make.

I have been to False Kiva 4 times in the past year with every intention of doing a shot similar to this at night. I ran into 2 problems:
1) I did not have a lens wide enough for this. This scene was shot as a single row pano with my UWA. I shoot crop and my widest lens at 10 mm is still not wide enough to cover this scene in a single shot which would make photographing the Milky Way more difficult.

2) I own a star tracker to get exceptional Milky Way shots and wanted no less for this shot. However, those trackers need to be aligned with Polaris which is hidden once inside this location. It is probably possible to align the tracker without this star visible but I lack the expertise to do this with any degree of accuracy.

Soooo, a composite must do to give the result I wanted. Interestingly enough I never got around to the composite until months after I shot these two scenes.

Foreground: False Kiva, Canyonlands
Milky Way: Shot outside of Grand Junction, CO