Cactus and Star Fields

The recent rains and the low winds here on Bonaire have made for nice blue skies during the day time and inky black skies at night.

On Monday night, I headed out to a deserted clearing a little to the west of Kunuku Roi Limunchi to take some more pictures for my growing Milky Way panorama.

Here is a picture of the Milky Way star fields appearing to rise up out of the cactus fields of the Bonaire mondi. The tail of Scorpius is at the top of the picture. The colored horizontal streaks are low lying clouds that were illuminated by the lights of town. I kept the thumbnail small but you can view a 1024x768 version by clicking on it. I'll be using it as desktop wallpaper for a bit.

A few stars can be seen peeking through the body of the cactus. That is probably because the camera moved as it tracked the stars during the three minute exposure, which caused the cactus to block and reveal several stars during that time. I could remove those stars in the computer but I haven't decided if "with stars" is nicer, or "without stars" would be nicer. Maybe you can place your vote in the "comments" section.

It is not unusual to spend a couple hours tweaking an astrophoto on the computer. I put about 10 minutes into this one, so I'll most likely go back and spend more time with this one, some day. I might be able to get rid of that orange sky glow from town for one thing.