Milky Way over Old Faithful

The Milky Way over Old Faithful - click to see larger

I was in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park in September with a friend.  We worked pretty hard at getting night sky pictures since it was nearly a new moon the entire trip. This photo of Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park with the Milky Way in the background was a second attempt. The geyser only erupts for a few minutes and if you don't get the shot you need to wait another 80-90 minutes for another attempt. The camera was on a tripod, 11mm lens, ISO 6400, f/4, 30 second exposure. Normally I'd say don't go over 25 seconds for stars pictures because they start to show streaks from the movement of the earth. However, with a lens that wide (set at 11mm), I think you can go a bit longer exposure. It was a beautiful night and there were several others taking pictures at the same time, so you may see very similar photos from other photographers. There are more night sky photos at the end of the Tetons/Yellowstone landscape collection.

The time-lapse video below was about 190 still images taken continuously for around three hours at about the same settings as above. I have an intervalometer shutter release with adjustable time of exposure, adjustable time between exposures and how many that you want to take. I'm not sure how long it ran because I fell asleep in the tent while it was taking pictures.  They were imported in to Windows Live Movie Maker and the duration for each set to 0.15 seconds which makes them play through pretty quickly.
Wait for the video to load below:

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