A Night Under The Stars

Flying into Queenstown, New Zealand at 9pm I didn't want to waste any time. Queenstown is known to be one of the top tourist attractions in NZ due to it's insanely beautiful landscape. 10pm comes and I've checked into my hotel. With no time to waste I decide to begin a 2 hour hike into the alpine to capture the stars. I reach the top of the mountain and it's completely cloudy, but shortly after summitting gaps in the clouds begin to appear. 3am, I can finally see an opportunity to capture the Milky Way. This is a 4 shot portrait panorama so I could capture the foreground all the way up to the core of the Milky Way.

This photo is one of my favorite astro shots I've taken. Partly because of the experience of solo hiking at night but also because of the crazy amount of air glow I managed to capture, almost looks like orange clouds. Airglow is faint luminescence of Earth's upper atmosphere that is caused by air molecules & atoms selective absorption of solar ultraviolet and X-radiation.