Milky Way Over Cuchara Valley

Mid-October is a great time to view the Milky Way in Cuchara. The sun sets earlier in the evening, the skies are typically clear with fall weather, and the Milky Way is directly above the southern horizon as soon as darkness sets in. I wanted to try to get a good Milky Way photo during the summer, but the Milky Way doesn’t get this high in the sky until about 2:00am and I never made it out. When we were in Cuchara for the Bear Fair in mid-October, the weather was perfect to give it a try.

The first photo in this series is a composite of two images taken 40 minutes apart. The foreground is a 20-second exposure taken just before dark. The sky is a 25-second exposure taken 40 minutes later when the sky was fully dark.

The photo below was taken the following evening at Yellow Pine Ranch. It is a single 20-second exposure with the Milky Way visible in the sky and reflected in the pond.

This last photo was captured the first night. My daughter swung the flashlight around in a big circle while the camera shutter was open.

All of these photos were taken with the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens on the Sony A58. I’ve since gotten a lot better at capturing the Milky Way-you can see some of my other images here.