Winter Milky Way Panorama From Otter Cliffs
Maine

The Milky Way arcs over the Atlantic Ocean as twilight approaches, as seen from the cliffs of Acadia. Astronomical twilight was starting when I took the shots for this panorama, which is why the sky is brighter and much more blue than a middle-of-the-night dark sky. This was a tricky shot to edit because I made the mistake of taking my camera inside overnight and letting it warm up, so that when I took it out in the 5 degree weather (sub zero with windchill) the inside of the lens (the worst place) had condensation and there wasn't much I could do to get rid of it, my heater wasn't doing much in that cold weather. Fortunately the condensation was only on the center of the lens, so the edges of each shot were fog-free. The result was that every shot had a foggy center, so after stitching the panorama there were a bunch of foggy spots spaced out on the horizon. I fixed those spots through the tedious work of manually aligning the edges of some shots where the areas I needed weren't fogged, warping the shots to fit the panorama (wide angle lens distortion is pretty serious at 14mm) and blending in just what was needed to get rid of the fogged areas.

Nikon D810A, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @ 14mm, f/2.8. 10 vertical shots at ISO 10,000 for 20 seconds each, 30 degrees of panning between each shot, stitched in Photoshop.

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Make:	NIKON CORPORATION
Model:	NIKON D810A
Exposure:	20
Aperture:	f/2.8
ISO Speed:	10000
Focal Length:	14 mm
Lens:	14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8