Witnessing the Aurora is life changing experience. This phenomena changed life of Adrien Mauduit who is the Man behind this photograph. In Cosmonity we believe that everybody has to see Northern Lights at least once in a lifetime, that's why we ask Adrien about share some of his outstanding photographs to prepare collections of prints to share his passion and beauty of the Aurora. Adrien is not only Aurora photographer, he is also one of the best landscape astrophotographer. This is one of his Milky Way photograph taken under dark sky of La Palma. Below here is original comment by Adrien to this image, because its creation was extremely complex task.
"UHD panorama of the Milky Way over La Palma 🤩
It's here! I had been waiting a whole year to realize and complete this project I had in mind for some time. I was trying to find ways to produce an extremely detailed and colorful picture of the milky way. As I have done many 50mm panorama in the past, I wanted to try something even more challenging and crazier, so I decided to not use an 85mm but go all the way to 135mm. Since the Samyang 135mm f2 is one of the best lenses for astrophotography, I used it with my astromoded 6D and headed to La Palma island (Bortle 1-2) to get this pano. But this wasn't a piece of cake. Out of the 10 days I was there, only a few had no calima, this haze coming from the Sahara desert. On the shooting night, it wasn't a done deal either as I had to battle with the wind during my multiple one-minute exposures! Then, I had no guiding so I shot the 73 pictures just using the view finder and hoping I got enough overlap! After 2 hours of integration, some calibration frame and hours of post-processing (the milky way moves so fast at 135mm so foreground and background are so hard to blend!), I am so excited and proud to unveil the result, which I am SO happy about.
Pano of 73 shots, Canon 6D modded + Samyang 135 mm f2 + Star adventurer Pro tracker + Kase LP filter. Foreground is untracked, background is tracked.
Sky: 56 x 1 minute at ISO 3200, f2.8 + calibration frames
Foreground: 17 x 1 minute at ISO 6400, f2, no LP filter
The same gear and tripod position were used, the shots were taken back to back. The sky was blended as it was with the foreground as I started shooting the pano.
Stitched in PtGui Pro, Edited in Lr and Ps (Star reduction)."
Adrien Mauduit is a 33-year-old Science engineer, professional photographer, cinematographer and well as a science author. Born in France in 1989, he has always been passionate about nature, space and the night sky. After completing his M. Sc. in Canada, he moved to Denmark to teach Science and Art. It is also where he encountered his first aurora. Adrien found an unconditional and unequivocal love for the mesmerizing phenomenon and bought his first camera to try and capture it. Since then, he’s traveled to many countries within the auroral zone like Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland in search of the elusive Green Lady. Today, Adrien made his former hobby into a full-time job based in Arctic Norway.