Today's Image

Rising Milky Way, laser light show, Singapore, July 21

The Milky Way, and a laser light show, over Singapore July 21, 2014.  Photo by Justin Ng.  For more about this photo, visit Justin Ng's blog.
The Milky Way, and a laser light show, over Singapore. Photo by Justin Ng. For more about this photo, visit Justin Ng’s blog.

Justin Ng captured this beautiful scene last night (July 21, 2014) It’s another of his “impossible” shots – that is, photos that inspire more astrophotographers in light-polluted cities to unveil the beauty of the elusive Milky Way galaxy. Justin wrote:

The image is a result of stacking several exposures taken, without moving the camera or changing the lens, over a period of approximately 35 minutes. It shows you how the night sky looked like at 9.10PM SGT before the spectacular laser show started from 9.30PM SGT onwards. We can’t see the night sky with our naked eye here due to its extreme light pollution and so, I’ve used a very complex workflow to unveil the details of the night sky before I stacked it against the beautiful foreground, showing the exact position of the Milky Way galaxy from this angle at 9.10PM SGT. I’ve also stacked a one-minute exposure shot for the green light trails from the riverboat. Minor star trails are visible in the image due to the correction of distortion and correcting the distortion with the lasers is no easy task. If I had corrected the distortion of the foreground image before I stacked the night sky image, the position of the Milky Way will not be accurate.

Visit Justin Ng’s blog.

Posted 
July 22, 2014
 in 
Today's Image

Like what you read?
Subscribe and receive daily news delivered to your inbox.

Your email address will only be used for EarthSky content. Privacy Policy
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

More from 

Deborah Byrd

View All