"Listening to the Stars" - Hammad Iqbal

"Listening to the Stars"

"The most epic Milky Way shot taken from Qatar... fullstop [see in fullscreen]. Taken in early morning of April 2nd, 2014. Milky Way is an exciting subject to capture and I intend to do lot more. For now, enjoy the image in full-screen and have a fascinating weekend under the stars, or I suppose I should say under the rainy clouds  

Winter has been amazing this year and I have had some wonderful opportunities to make great images. Being an artist who is fascinated by the stars, galaxies and mysteries of the universe, I had to capture the Milky Way in its beautiful arch shape in Qatar.

But great things don't come without sacrifice. On a journey to capture the Milky Way, there was no planning and everything depended on the atmospheric conditions and the perfect time when the Milky Way would appear above the horizon.

Forunately, on the midnight of Wednesday (April 2, 2014) at 12am, I just went out to see the sky and it looked good, although there were some clouds but overall it was a clear sky with decent visibility despite some moisture in the air. A dear friend of mine who happens to be a hobbyist astronomer was coming to Doha from Al Dafna and called me the same night to ask if we could go out hunting for Milky Way.

My concern was the clouds because recently Qatar has been witnessing surprising cloudy skies and rains and forecasts have not been spot on. With some hesitation, I decided to go out and try my luck. 2 hours later and about 100km away from Doha city beyond a small valley of Al-Aamiriyah, me and my friend found a promising spot for capturing the Milky Way.

By the way, before we headed out that night, I confirmed the time and position of the Milky Way using a free software called Stellarium (a must-have for the Milky Way lovers and astro-photographers). So I knew exactly the time and angle of Milky Way.

According to the software, the best time to capture Milky Way was from 2:30am till 4:00am. And I took complete advantage of that timeframe. But as I mentioned earlier, I had to sacrifice a good night's sleep and went straight to work after wrapping up from location.

But the feeling of accomplishment was strong enough to keep me up and running for the next 24 hours. And now here I am sharing the wonderful Milky Way with you. I am sure you will love it." - Hammad Iqbal
 

Exposure Information:

Exposure: 5-shot vertical panorama. Each shot at f2.8, ISO 2000, 25sec
Gear: Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 at 14mm
Post: ACR, Photoshop CS6, Nik collection

Images captured by Hammad Iqbal. Check out his Facebook for more pictures.