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Moonscape Expanse

The desert of Hanksville, Utah creates an other-worldly experience under the night sky.

Photo Story

  • Episode 5: The desert of Hanksville, Utah creates an other-worldly experience under the night sky.

    Moonscape Expanse

    Episode 5: The desert of Hanksville, Utah creates an other-worldly experience under the night sky.

Episode 5: So nice, I shot it twice.  And it’s really lovely to have a landscape view of the expansive scenery supporting the brilliant night sky over Factory Butte. 

You may be wondering why these images use a photo of the sky and a separate photo of the foreground.  The reason is that I use a star tracker tool on my tripod that matches the rotation of the earth, so that I can leave the shutter open for a very long time without the stars  becoming blurry as they appear to move (or as we rotate here on Earth). But as the camera is slowly turning with that rotation, it’s also blurring the foreground. So when the first photo is complete, I turn off the star tracker and take an exact photo again, but without the camera moving, so that the ground is perfectly still. Then I need to meticulously blend the two together so you get the best stars with the best foreground.  Yes, it’s hard, but I love it. 

  • Canon 5D with 14mm lens
  • Sky: one tracked exposure at 2-minutes and 41-seconds
  • Foreground: one exposure of 2-minutes and 41 seconds

Day / Night view