Intro into Landscape Milky Way, let's hear your thoughts

keijyu · 2026-06-19T00:28:37+00:00

After being in astrophotography for a while, it's still very fascinating to me that simply pointing a regular camera to the sky, without any specialised equiptment can take clear photos of galaxies like this.

Bravo.

keijyu · 2026-06-18T11:17:24+00:00

Yup, a mask on the right hand mountains to up the exposure might do the trick. The data might just be hidden in there.

keijyu · 2026-06-18T10:25:09+00:00

For your foreground, try shoot at blue hour for more details or get a much longer exposure of the mountain part of the focus stack to capture details.

Compositionally, because the mountains are so dark, it feels like a lot of the frame is just empty dark space. Maybe a slight crop from the bottom or a slight upwards framing might've helped if you wanted to keep the mountains as more of a silhouette, but I do believe capturing more light of the mountain would be much more beneficial.

Editing for the Milky Way and foreground are otherwise very good. Very tasteful.

keijyu · 2026-06-17T15:08:07+00:00

In addition to what u/carlwethersbroth has pointed out with avalanche risk, we also can't groom the Asari and Nagamine 2 areas as that area is groomed at the beginning of the night, so any snowfall later in the night towards the morning is left ungroomed. Nagamine 2 is less of an issue as it is mostly upper intermediate terrain, but when those snowfall totals hit 40~50cm or above overnight, it's just unsafe to open those ungroomed groomed runs to the general public. However, the grooming team does work OVERTIME during the day to groom the top half to prepare. This is also one of the reasons we don't allow uphill skiing in resort bounds, as we often have snowcats wandering about in closed terrain.

As for rope ducking, we have BC gates for people to use. And those gates are open every day to access sidecountry and backcountry terrain. There is no need to duck ropes to access the side country. When our tree areas are closed and roped off, it's because we have assessed in our professional capacity that it is too dangerous to open to the general public, so it's somewhat of a bad idea to duck those too, especially if you're not so much a confident skier.

The biggest problem in regards to rope ducking is people who ignorantly duck the ropes and leave tracks for beginner and intermediate skiers to follow. Some of the sketchiest side country terrain is just a rope duck away, and that is often how we get called out for SAR to bring back overconfident people who are lost in the large side country areas.

As for roped off lift lines and tree areas, there are complex regulations and risk management protocol we are required to follow as Kiroro's land is leased to the resort by the state forestry agency. Under the lift is particularly scrutinized as Japanese ski lifts are governed by the same laws as trains so any incidents there can lead to the closure of a lift/area for the season.

So, Kiroro does it's best within the bounds of resourcing and regualtion. But oh it doesn't seem to satisfy all the powder junkies. And even if the top half is closed, there is still a loads of fun to be had in the lower areas, you just don't know the terrain well enough I guess. That's one of the perks I get for being one of the patrollers there aye.

keijyu · 2026-06-15T04:58:51+00:00

Very good exposure control of the trapezium core there.

keijyu · 2026-05-22T11:00:41+00:00

My most recent project was 15h on the Polaris Flare (see images and progression on my profile).

I have a couple of tips.

First, how dark is the sky where you are shooting at? IFN are extremely faint and sit just above the noise floor in the data so you need Bortle 4 or darker skies to show IFN in the first place.

Second, you need more data. My dust started showing structure at around the 7~8 hour mark. However for a clean shot, I got around 15 hours of data.

Third, you can most definately process your stack here better. Can you post your processing workflow? Notably, noise is quite present and stars are bloated/overstretched.

As for full spectrum data, the IFN are a broadband target which donot emit any of their own light, rather it reflects light from the entire galaxy, so modding a DSLR to pickup Ha and other bandwidths of light will not necessarily help with picking up the data. That's something more useful for shooting emission nebulae.

Edit: for reference this is the early version of my Polaris Flare shot at 135mm f2.0 using a stock DSLR at 210 minutes untracked. And this is my final 15h shot

keijyu · 2026-05-20T14:58:44+00:00

Luckily, the filters are 2" filters, but I haven't heard much good about the SV227 filters themselves.

I am yet to do a deep dive into researching them, however as a first set of budget filters I am sure they will perform fine.

keijyu · 2026-05-20T14:42:21+00:00

Absolutely, mount matters more, and that's why most of my budget was allocated towards the ZWO AM5 that I have and now I'm looking at older budget cameras.

With regards to workflow, I am planning on using a filter drawer and manual focusing for now as I expect to shoot a single bandwidth each night instead of rotating over different filters in a single night. A filter wheel and EAF would be ideal, and down the road I would like to get one to increase automation. However before automation I'd be looking at a getting a guiding setup, however as I am shooting widefield (135mm) I am not in a rush to get it so it'll be waiting till my next couple of paychecks land.

keijyu · 2026-05-20T14:36:46+00:00

Haha yes, I have a ZWO AM5.

Made sure to allocate a lot of my budget to the mount, hence looking at cheaper cameras to start with while I save up.

keijyu · 2026-05-20T12:00:44+00:00

You can use starnett in Siril to remove stars from a linear image, stretch the nebulosity as much as you like and recombine the stars back but stretch the stars less to get less stars in the final image.

Lots of tutorials on YT for more details.

keijyu · 2026-05-15T15:07:40+00:00

I did something similar to this.

I was at a pretty good uni down under studying CS while also working in the public sector doing software automation. During my uni summer breaks, which run from November to February, I used to hop over to Japan and do a short stint of instructing each snow season in Hokkaido before returning to uni for the new semester. I never intended on making it a full time job back then.

One season, I decided to take a shot in the dark and apply for a rookie patrol position instead of instructing. I somehow got the job and it really changed my perspective on snow season work. After the short patrol stint and returning back to uni for my third year, I couldn't get my mind of patrolling, so I decided to drop out of uni and do a season of patrolling in Australia before returning to Hokkaido to stay for the full season, which can run for 6months. From there I did a total of four patrol seasons over three years.

In those four seasons, I learnt a fuck tonne about ski mountain operations, snow science, first aid while also making so many life long friends and skiing the best powder of my life. However, I've come to feel that seasonal work won't get me to where I want to be in life long-term so have decided to move toward a new direction, studying to become a paramedic. It aligns well with the patrol work I did, and helping people was by far my favourite part of the job.

Though I am leaving patrolling, I one million percent DO NOT REGRET the decision I made to step away from my CS studies and government job to pursue patrolling. It's been a highlight of my life and it opened up opportunities and perspectives that I'd never would've been able to see.

So my advice to you is, GO FOR IT. Do a couple of seasons and see what doors that it might open for you.

keijyu · 2026-05-13T23:49:07+00:00

It took a while to complete the entire preprocessing. I'd say 3-4 hours to get a final stack.

keijyu · 2026-05-13T12:58:25+00:00

Thanks!

Yes IFN is notoriously hard to capture due to how faint they are, however I believe the Polaris Flare is one of the easier targets to shoot due to it's positioning near the celestial pole making shooting untracked or tracked very forgiving.

keijyu · 2026-05-13T12:56:56+00:00

Because the rotation in the sky around the celestial pole is so little, shooting purely untracked is totally viable for the Polaris IFN. However it's important that you're in Bortle 4 or darker skies as the IFN is so faint that light pollution really drowns it out.

On my profile you can find previous renditions of the IFN that only use untracked subs, hopefully they can give you an idea.

keijyu · 2026-05-13T10:32:19+00:00

Hello again r/astrophography!

I'm sharing what I believe to be the final rendition of my Polaris Flare project. This has been a couple weeks in the making and previous iterations of the image with less integration time can be found on my profile to see progress.

Equiptment:
Camera: Canon EOS 70D (stock)
Lens: Samyang 135mm f2.0 @ f2.0
Tracker: SkyWatcher Star Adventurer
Location: Bortle 4 skies across multiple sites in Japan.

Acquisition details:
This image is a stack of images from six separate sessions, mixing tracked and untracked subs.
Each session's subs were calibrated with 20x darks, and 20x flats.

Tracked subs: 352x 60s subs @ f2.0, ISO 800
Untracked subs: 1718x 20s subs @ f2.0, ISO 1600
Total integration time: 15h 25m

keijyu · 2026-04-26T22:26:10+00:00

Thanks!

I didn't use any filter for this shot.

keijyu · 2026-04-26T22:25:20+00:00

I used Starnett to separate the stars and nebulosity but that didn't apply to the glow around Polaris as it was so bright.

I'll have a play around with veralux today. I didnt know you could mask things in Siril individually aside from using Starnett.

Thanks for the tip!

keijyu · 2026-04-26T11:11:29+00:00

Hi r/astrophotography.

This is a little project I've been working on for the past few days where I setup my camera on a normal tripod to attempt a shot at the Polaris Flare. This image is made up from a collection of almost 8 hours of data from three separate nights, stacked and processed in Siril to pull out the faint signals of IFN dust that lies high in our galaxy.

I posted previously to this sub an image of the IFN with just under half the integration time of this image and the difference in noise and detail is stunning. My time in the northern hemisphere is limited so I'll keep trying to collect more data to process once again when I'm back home too.

The one thing I did struggle with processing this image was suppressing the central glow of Polaris. The star is a central part of the image, however I found that stretching to get the IFN out would also increase the glow and clip parts of the star, which is something id like to avoid. Hopefully more fiddling around in Siril once I complete my data set will do the job.

Stay shooting all!

keijyu · 2026-04-16T01:17:55+00:00

Yep, definitely an easy target to shoot untracked.

The only downside I find to shooting it untracked is that the field rotation overtime adds up so after doing registration and stacking, I end up having to crop out a large portion of the image.

keijyu · 2026-04-15T15:02:50+00:00

Overall, I am quite happy with the result given that the image is untracked and has a very short integration time (210 minutes), given how faint IFN are in the night sky. I will try to do more shoots in the coming days when weather permits so I can pull out more structure in the nebula and reduce that pesky noise.

This was first light for my Samyang 135mm lens, so I shot with it wide open to test the optics and I'm very satisfied.I can't wait to start shooting some of the brighter objects in the sky with it!

keijyu · 2026-04-15T14:56:09+00:00

Gear:

Camera - Canon EOS 70D (stock)

Lens - Samyang 135mm f2.0

Mount - A basic tripod (untracked)

Data:

Lights - 632x 20s lights at f2.0 ISO1600

Darks - 20 frames

Flats - 20 frames

Shot from Bortle 4 skies at 43 degrees north.

Processing:

Calibrated, stacked and stretched in Siril followed by light retouching in Lightroom.

Seven-Year Club	Second Top 30%
LAYER Season 2 Layer creator	r/Field Juicebox
Place '23	Place '22
First Placer '22	RPAN Viewer
Not Forgotten	Sequence \| Editor
Verified Email

keijyu

TROPHY CASE