My Milky Way Expedition

I recently completed my first successful 'exploration' of photographing the Milky Way on the night of June 13, 2015 at Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine.  It was also my inauguration to simply witnessing the Milky Way's presence.  This had been a personal goal of mine for several months, requiring significant planning.

A little after 11pm on that Saturday night after driving about an hour to Acadia, I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to Sand Beach, and I took my equipment and various items out of my car.  I had rented from BorrowLenses a Canon 6D, a Rokinon 14mm f2.8 lens, and an intervalometer. Some bug spray, a headlamp, mace (for personal protection), my MeFOTO Roadtrip tripod, and hand-warmers were part of my "toolkit" (the hand-warmers were for wrapping around the lens rubber to prevent condensation from forming on the lens).  I also needed a caffeine pill to stay awake, considering I'd be out there until 3am!  Through prior research using applications such as Stellarium and Planit! Pro for Photographers, I already knew exactly when and where the Milky Way would be visible, as well as when the moon (nearly a new moon) would be below the horizon.

I walked down to Sand Beach, an ideal Milky Way viewing location, as it's set between rocky landscapes that block out most of the light pollution from nearby Bar Harbor.  It only took about a minute for my eyes to adjust enough in the dark to see it: a vague outline of what appeared to be a vast cloud extending from the southern horizon to the northern horizon.  It was a stunning sight. You can't really prepare yourself for its beauty if you've never seen it before.  I took a few moments to pause and appreciate what I was seeing up in those skies.  How sad it is that we waste so much electricity on our artificial lights and shun the darkness, blocking out most of the night sky!  

One of my initial shots -- some clouds interfered a bit

I set up my equipment and proceeded with some test shots after manually focusing the lens on a distant bright star.  The above photograph was one of my initial prized images appearing on the camera's image review screen -- with a full frame DSLR camera, you can capture the detail and colors far better than with the naked eye.  I could see that some clouds were blocking some of the Milky Way, so I waited them out for a few minutes -- the forecast called for mostly clear skies, a necessity for viewing purposes.  Of course, to my unaided eyes, that gorgeous sight in the sky looked much more like the processed image below - faint but beautiful.

To the naked eye, the Milky Way looked much like this

For the majority of my shots, I ended up using the following camera settings: ISO 2500, 25 second exposure, f/2.8.  White balance didn't matter since I was saving to RAW files that I could easily adjust in post processing.  The manual-focus wide-angle Rokinon lens captured a broad view of the skies. 

Whenever I needed to see what I was actually doing with my equipment, I used the red LED light on my headlamp.  Red light doesn't negatively impact our night vision as much as other light.  That's important because it takes several minutes for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, and any introduced light will biologically "reset" your eyesight to normal; thus, you have to wait a while once again to see the Milky Way with your own eyes.  

The red LED light from my headlamp added interesting effects in this shot

I didn't intend on spending all of my time at Sand Beach, as I'd heard Little Hunters Beach was also a great photographer's spot.  It is located further southwest just past Otter's Cove.  It was at Little Hunters Beach that I spent the majority of my time.  It seemed as though the skies were even darker there.  I decided to utilize the intervalometer to automate the process of photographing the night sky, to create a time lapse video.  While that was happening, it gave me time to see what my Canon T3 and 24mm lens could do.  I didn't expect much as it's not a full-frame DSLR and isn't built for night photography -- you have to utilize high ISO settings to photograph the Milky Way, which equates to a lot of noise in the resulting images.  My T3 surprisingly did okay, although nothing of the quality I'd want for making a print.

My Canon T3 and 24mm lens did surprisingly okay (though quite poor compared to the 6D) 

The 6D, on the other hand, gave me one of its best views in detail and color of the Milky Way on Little Hunters Beach, below.

I should have kept better track of the time -- a lesson learned for the next time I do a time lapse of the Milky Way.  I stopped the intervalometer far, far too soon; with 75 photographs taken, I was able to produce a brief three-second clip of the starry skies rotating across the horizon (although technically, it is the Earth that's rotating).  That you can see on YouTube in HD (see below) -- it'll flash by quickly, though!  Night sky time lapses are mesmerizing -- to see all of those stars in motion, you can easily visualize the concept that we exist on this tiny, fragile planet, spinning within an epic universe.

  

After Little Hunters Beach, I ventured to my final destination of the night -- atop Cadillac Mountain.  As I was winding my way to the top of the mountain in my Prius, I knew exactly what kind of moment I wanted to capture.  In the last bend in the road, there's a spot where you can pull over and look south toward Northeast Harbor.  The light pollution was heavier in that direction, but I could still clearly see in the skies our home galaxy's core.  I tested the view with the 6D, liked what I saw, and then set a twenty second delay on the timer.  That was plenty of time for me to hop across the large rocks toward the south and pose for the camera.  I gazed above at the Milky Way with my headlamp brightly shining up.  It was my 'selfie' of the night.  A meteor, shooting across the sky, photobombed that selfie.  I'll take it. :)

A selfie with the Milky Way, and a photobombing meteor

It was a fantastic experience -- one that I plan to do again in the future and improve upon.

I strongly encourage you to make your own journey to a locale dark enough to witness that gorgeous Milky Way in the night sky.  You'll need to get many miles away from the cities and suburbia (which may be difficult to do) to escape the light pollution that sadly makes the Milky Way invisible to over two-thirds of the US population and half of the world, according to a 2001 study.  To see the night skies in all of its vast beauty is to experience something beyond our daily modern lives of technology.  Something that may connect you to a larger, enlightening world.