NATHAN MYHRVOLD
The White Rim and the Milky Way

The Green River Overlook is among the most dramatic sights of the Island in the Sky unit of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. It overlooks a canyon carved by the Green River, the top layer of which passes through a formation known as the White Rim sandstone. It looks like a terrestrial extension of the dusty nebulas that darken the central belt of the Milky Way.

Taken in the late fall, the foreground image was shot as an HDR panorama just after sunset, when the sandstone was dimly illuminated by sky glow. The night sky was captured with a fixed tripod and composed of about 1,000 frames of the stars and galaxy. Those frames were then registered with SIRIL at the approximate midpoint of the sequence. The twilight and nighttime shots were then aligned accurately using Stellarium and composited in Photoshop.

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