Categories: Astrophotosmilky waySci-Fi

Astrophoto: I Need Warp Speed in 3 Minutes or We’re All Dead

Is Earth going at warp speed in this image? This is a composite of two photographs, one for the foreground and one for the sky. The photographer zoomed in on the image of the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it a 'warp speed' look. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.

Whoa! Having just returned from the science and science fiction mashup that is Dragon Con, my mind is still combining the two. Then I saw this image from Mike Taylor, which is one of the most unique Milky Way images I’ve ever seen. Perfect!

Mike said he combined two images, one for the foreground and one for the night sky image of the Milky Way. “I zoomed in on the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it the “warp speed” look,” he said.

He calls the image “Somniloquy” which is a term that describes the act of talking while asleep. Yep. I’m pretty sure that happened at Dragon Con, too….

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Check out another awesome Milky Way image by Mike, below.

This is a 7 image vertical panorama of the night sky in Maine where the late Summer Milky Way makes a dramatic background for a small shack and tree. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.

Mike noted this image was taken right next to a cell tower that emits a red light over the landscape throughout the night. “Normally I would change the color balance but I decided to leave the red color in the foreground (although I toned it down quite a bit) to add to the overall feeling of the image,” he said. Mike stitched the images together via PTGui and processed through Lightroom 5 & Photoshop CS5.

Nikon D600 & 14-24 @ 14mm
f/2.8 – 7 x 30 secs – ISO 4000
08/28/14 – 10:20PM

You can see a discussion of this image on Mike’s G+ page.

The specs on the ‘warp speed’ image:

Milky Way image taken with a Nikon D600 & 14-24mm at 24mm, f/2.8 – 30 seconds at ISO 4000 on 05/30/14 at 1:38 AM at Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.

Foreground image also taken with the same camera at f/5.6 – 1/60 seconds at ISO 100 on 05/25/14 at 6:28 PM, on Potash Rd near Moab, Utah.

Mike offers photography classes, and you can find out more about when/where here.

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/