The spectacular area around the Galactic Centre of the Milk Way in Scorpius (at right) and Sagittarius (at left) as shot from Australia with this area nearly overhead in the wee hours of an April morning. Saturn is left of centre. Yellow Antares is right of centre. The region is rich in nebulas and star clusters. The Dark Horse and Pipe Nebula is above centre. The Sagittarius Starcloud is left of centre. The Small Sagittarius Starcloud, M24, is at upper left in the Milky Way. This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures with the 35mm Canon L-Series lens at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600, with an additional exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A filter layered in to add the star glows.
The area around the head of Scorpius, including the bright star Antares at lower left of centre and the dark lanes leading to the star Rho Ophiuchi. The area is filled with colourful nebulosity, including yellow and blue reflection nebulas and magenta emission nebulas. To the right of Antares is the globular cluster Messier 4. The field is similar to what binoculars would take in. I shot this the morning of May 4, 2014, from the Four Bar Cottages near the Arizona Sky Village, near Portal Arizona. This is a stack of 10 x 4 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 135mm lens and Canon 5D Mark II (filter modified) at ISO 1600. This overexposed the frames but gave enough signal to bring out the faint dark nebulas without introducing a lot of noise. Even so, I forgot to turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction so no dark frames were applied to these images. The camera was tracking, but not guiding, on the iOptron SkyTracker. Stacked with Median combine to eliminate satellite trails.
