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August 2000 (2) <The Milky Way above Mauna Kea summit>


At the 4200-meter-high summit of Mauna Kea I experienced the worst possible weather conditions accompanied by subzero temperatures and strong winds. In spite of this, I was overwhelmed by frighteningly but mysteriously bright stars overhead, which I had never experienced in my life. The center of Sagittarius was so bright that it looked as if the full moon had been exploded and shattered in pieces in the Milky Way. Scorpius was high in the sky and, further south, faint stars around Lupus were shining as bright as first-magnitude stars at the level of our feet.
Unfortunately, I didn't take an equatorial mounting along. The photo was taken with a 28mm f/2.8 camera exposed on Fuji Provia 400F film for 5 minutes.

The best shots of the stars shining above Mauna Kea domes will be shown on another occasion.

28mm f/2.8 without tracking
5-minute exposure on Fuji Provia 400 film




Copyright (C) 2000 Tsutomu Seki.