Orion and the Zodiacal Light over the Rocky Mountains

High in the Colorado Rockies on a wintery evening, the night sky with Orion and the Zodiacal light shines over a lonely wind swept landscape at 10,000 feet. The bright band of light from the lower left to above center is the Milky Way galaxy and the bluish-white band from lower right to upper center is the Zodiacal light--dust in our Solar System scattered by sunlight. In the band of the Zodiacal light is the star cluster M45, the Pleiades. To the upper right of the Pleiades is the red California nebula. The bright "star" at the upper left is the planet Jupiter. Below the left star in Orion's belt is the Horsehead nebula, and the red arc around the Orion's belt and sword is Barnard's Loop. Many star clusters and nebulae show in this image. Note the many dark lanes in the Milky Way. These are very long filaments of dark dust.

This is a mosaic of 32 images. As I started the mosaic, wind started, and continued to get stronger as I proceeded to make the mosaic, which took 39 minutes. Near the end of the sequence, the wind became so strong, I estimated 50 miles per hour, that I was concerned that my lens would be sand-blasted by blowing ice grains. When I took my gloves off to make adjustments, the flying ice grains stung like sand in a sand storm. Indeed, the lens was covered in a layer of dust when I was done, but did not damage the coatings. The temperature (without any wind chill factor) was 18 degrees F (-8 C). The wind chill made it seem like -6 F.

Canon 6D digital camera, Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 lensat f/1.4. Thirty two 30-second exposures at ISO 1600 were made for the mosaic. On the sky, the camera tracked the stars using an Astrotrac, then images of the land were made with no tracking. The sky mosaic includes 17 images and the land 15 images. Final image is 12,600 pixels wide by 11488 pixels tall covering an angular area of about 132 x 120 degrees. The image was obtained on March 19, 2014, a little over 2 hours after sunset.

This image is a crop of the full mosaic.  A higher resolution image can be seen on my web site at 
http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/ga ... 1050s.html

and in my articles section, you can find more information on the color of the night sky (which is generally not blue from dark moonless nights).

Roger