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

By Nancy Atkinson - September 2, 2014 at 3:40 PM UTC | Observing
14757372461_611ff80af4_z.jpg

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....

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

[caption id="attachment_114264" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

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. [/caption]

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 Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com