Date Taken: 06/12/2016
Location: Devil’s Courthouse Overlook, Milepost 422.4 on the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

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Date Taken: 08/24/2016
Location: Devil’s Courthouse Overlook, Milepost 422.4 on the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Rokinon 14mm f/2.8
Focal Length: 14mm
ISO: 1600
Shutter: 30sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Filters: none
Exposure: Manual
How I Got This Shot: I used Stellarium to check the positioning of the Saturn and Mars conjunction in advance, then used PhotoPills to verify that I could get a panorama capturing the conjunction, the Milky Way, and the silhouette of Devil’s Courthouse. I went up to the Parkway on Tuesday night but there was a thick cloud cover and no stars. I went up again on Wednesday and the sky was perfectly clear from sunset until almost 10:15. I took these shots at 9:50PM. Some clouds rolled in shortly after that and by 10:15 the sky wasn’t visible at all. The photo was taken in the parking area and the interpretive sign is barely visible in the lower right of the picture. The panorama is composed of 5 images shot in portrait orientation in order to capture as much of the sky as possible while also getting the near ground landscape features. I used auto white balance and then adjusted to 3750K in post-processing. I actually prefer to use 3750K when shooting night shots (you get a natural look at the colors in the camera) but I forgot to change the setting before I started taking pictures. It really doesn’t matter when shooting RAW since this is easy to correct in Lightroom. There is minimal post-processing. I added clarity, just a bit of tint and contrast, and did noise reduction.

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The Blue Ridge Parkway has over 200 overlooks from its northern beginning in Shenandoah National Park to its southern terminus in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

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