An Orion's Belt deepscape image had been a goal for a while after seeing a few online that focused mainly on the Orion Nebula, or also including the Horsehead Nebula. Although I originally thought about trying to recreate a similar image, once I started planning I began to wonder if I could capture some of Barnard's Loop within the same shot, acting as a frame for the belt and the nebulae inside it. Deepscape images are some of my favourites because I find them really challenging and I love how they show the contrasting scale between the objects in the sky and the foreground.
The Plan:
Using the app 'PlanIt! Pro' as usual, I managed to find a suitable location within hiking distance from where I was staying that looked out across the mountains in the direction I knew Orion would be setting. The app also helped to visualise how the image would look and calculated a focal length of 112mm (70mm lens on a crop sensor DSLR).
Below are the screenshots of my plan, as well as an image from my recce hike that day, before coming back later.
The Shot:
I began hiking towards the spot just after sunset, hoping to be set up and ready to polar align the tracker before it got too dark. I thought I had trouble finding Polaris the night before as it was so dark so I wanted to get an early start this time. Avoiding the temptation to stop for photos on the way was difficult, the sky turning amazing shades of blue and purple, with the horizon still a strong orange and silhouetting the peaks as the sun kept setting. But I knew it was roughly a 25 minute hike (without the full pack I was now carrying) so I needed to push on.
After a longer hike than I had remembered, I caught my breath whilst my eyes adapted to the darkness and started to set up. Unlike the night before, I managed to get polar aligned in under 10 minutes which was great, but also meant waiting an hour or so for the skies to get dark enough to start shooting. However, this did give me lots of time to make sure I had focused the lens correctly and lined Orion's Belt properly in the frame before I started shooting.
As this was going to be a 'deepscape' image it meant that I would need to shoot the stars and foreground separately so that I could get enough star images to stack together. This would help bring out the details and colours and allow me to blend this with a sharp image of the mountains (the foreground would be blurred with the movement of the star tracker otherwise). After framing the mountains, I turned the tracker back to where it lined up with Orion, and this meant that as the stars and the tracker rotated it would eventually line up with the mountains for the final image.
Once everything was set, I pressed the button on the remote and stood back as the camera started taking the first shots. I had planned to keep everything going for around 4 hours (until Orion dropped below the horizon), which would give me lots to work with when it came to processing the image, so I settled in for a long night. However the weather had other plans...
About an hour in, I double checked the focus and made sure everything was still running ok, and as I pressed the button to continue shooting I felt a breeze come up and over the hill. No more than a few seconds later, that breeze was now pretty strong gusts of wind, so I moved in front of the set up to try and stop the tripod or camera shaking. But with the wind getting stronger, and effectively being in a wind tunnel in a mini valley, the tripod was shaking and shooting long exposures became impossible. I tried to hold out, still hoping that the wind would die down but eventually I decided I had to just try and get a foreground image so that I at least had something to use when editing later on.
I packed everything up except the tripod and camera, reframed the mountains as quickly as possible and started a 10 minute exposure. At this point I had resulted in holding the tripod as still as I could by leaning on it for the whole exposure, and I made it to around 8 minutes before I decided to give in and pack up completely. All of this resulted in a rushed foreground shot but luckily one that was usable in the end. The car passing by actually helped light the mountains slightly which meant I could get away with a relatively short exposure considering how dark it was and how far the mountains were away from the camera.
Of course, as I reached the end of the path back near the hotel the wind completely died down just as quickly as it had started...
Result:
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