This is another galactic arch, this time taken from the causeway over the fringes of Lake Lenthil. Being on a bridge made levelling my tripod trivial, and this appears to have helped with rotating the camera to form the panorama as it has stitched the various photos together much more successfully.

Another possible reason the final image worked out better is that I took many more (thirteen) images to make this. This allows the panorama software to avoid lens distortions which occur more strongly on the edges of the individual images, and instead stich together the more accurate centre areas.

Experimenting and improving with this kind of work is a slow process. There is only a limited window each year around summer where the galaxy is high in the sky during the night (the rest of the year it’s up during day time and therefore not visible). Further, there are only a limited number of nights each month where the moon is shaded enough, and the sky is free of haze and clouds, in a location free(ish) of light pollution, with all the normal composition consideration of landscape photography.

I’ve said before that my ambition is to improve every time I pick up my camera. So far, so good.