(The Whole of) the Night's Sky...

Literally....

One hundred and eighty degrees (diagonal corner to opposite diagonal corner) capture of the stars. With a little bit of moon, at the bottom.

After my star-strewn night landscape Blip of yesterday, with even some poetry to go with it, I thought I'd finally get a shot I've always wanted to try.

Trouble is, my tripod head doesn't do straight-up! Almost, but not quite. So I had to have the whole tripod leaning at an angle that meant if I let go of it, it would all come crashing down. But to hold it, I had to kneel down, as I would be in the photo if I stood up!

I shot blind as I just couldn't see the viewfinder - or screen - from that angle.

One 30 sec exposure and such is the angle of coverage, there was still some trees in two of the corners. So, in editing, a combination of 'warp' (in Transform) to pull those corners out and cloning and the those trees were gone, without affecting the overall image size very much.

The local streetlights of the city affect slightly and these come out as the orangey parts. This is not meant to be an astronomically perfect, or accurate study, more an artistic and hopefully, attractive, take on what my Samyang fisheye lens saw. Colours have not been changed too much, if anything, some warmth has been removed but various and variable exposure and contrast undertaken to get the most out of a bit of dog's dinner...

Finally, I didn't know which way to have it up! Would it matter? Horizontal would fit on PC screens more easily but in the end I settled on this.

Definitely one to view LARGE