Stood under a dark sky in rural Vermont and finally got why people chase these photos

I was up near Burlington last weekend visiting my sister, and she took me out to this random field way out of town around 2 AM. No lights anywhere, just cold air and stars. I've looked at astrophotography online for years, but standing there I realized I never really understood the scale until I saw it with my own eyes. Those photos of the Milky Way you see posted here, they catch the color and detail, but they don't capture that feeling of being small and quiet under it all. I snapped a few quick shots with my phone and they came out blurry and disappointing, but I didn't even care. Is there a way to train your eye to see more of what the camera picks up, or do you just get used to the dark after a while?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade4386d ago

That thing about the eye adjusting after 20 minutes is mostly true but not quite. Your rod cells, which handle low light, take more like 30 to 40 minutes to fully kick in, and even then you're still not seeing colors the way a long exposure camera does. The real trick is learning to look slightly off to the side of what you want to see, your peripheral vision picks up faint light better than staring straight at it. Also, a bright phone screen for even five seconds resets most of that adaptation, so if you pull out your phone to check a map or take a shot, you lose a lot of the dark vision you built up.

morgan.joseph6d ago

Blurry phone pics are basically a rite of passage for anyone who tries this, congrats on joining the club. The camera sees way more than our eyes ever will because it can just sit there and collect light for minutes while our eyeballs get bored and start making up stars. If you want to train your eye, find a spot with zero moon and zero lights and just stand still for like 20 minutes without looking at your phone. Your eyes will slowly adjust and you'll start picking out more faint stuff, but don't expect to see the neon purple and blue swirls the camera shows you. It's like comparing a movie trailer to the actual movie, the real experience is mostly feeling like a tiny speck in a giant ocean. Your sister probably thinks you're a weirdo now but that's the price of admission.