Welcome to the sixth edition of our User Story series.

This time, we're featuring Kevin Nyun ( @kevinnyunphoto) and his capture of Zeta Ophiuchi over Mt Shasta.

When I photographed the Moon, I had an idea 🤔

I was itching to fully dive into my next astrophotography project ever since the Milky Way core season began in Spring.

Like many others, the Milky Way arch was high on the target, but something else came into mind when I was capturing the Full Moon setting in April.

At the time, I was composing the image with my telephoto lens using one of the local lighthouses as my alignment.

When we zoom in with our telephoto lens, the compression enlarges the objects behind our subjects, and that's how we get the Moon to look huge in our images.

It sparked an idea to do the same with some of the asterism objects and hydrogen-alpha emissions from nebulas in the sky. It was also the perfect opportunity to use my MSM NOMAD tracker.

I am a landscape photographer at heart, so instead of going pure deep-space tracking, I wanted to align the stars with elements we have on Earth as foreground.

Plan, Scout & Practice ✍️

Near the end of April, I purchased an 85mm and 50mm F1.8 lens while I began searching for composition targets.

I am from the Bay Area, and when scouting on PlanIt Pro, I saw the Milky Way would be rising behind Mt Shasta, about a 5-hour drive from where I live.

My target was the Zeta Ophiuchi sitting on top of the volcano. I only had one weekend to capture this alignment before the object rose earlier before dark later in the summer.

I even tested locally with Barnard’s Loop and Orion near the coast just to practice, so I wouldn’t mess up when I drove out to Shasta.

It is the Day! 📸

When the day arrived, everything went according to plan.

The MSM NOMAD was super easy to use – it felt like a cheat code!

Because I own the Richard Tatti Kit, I used the phone polar alignment method, which was convenient with the Stellarium App to find Polaris.

I tracked the sky with 1-minute exposures without any filter as Zeta Ophiuchi was rising.

Once I got the frame I needed, I added the Astronomik 12nm filter to pull more Hydrogen-alpha emission from the area.

Sky: Sony A7III astro modified camera with Sony 50mm F1.8 lens.

Foreground: Sony A7RV shot at 30 seconds in deep night.

The only thing I did not perform was stacking because I did not have enough time to capture all the frames. However, with modern tools like DXO PureRAW and Lightroom Denoise, I still managed to create a clean image.

I hope my story inspires you to get out there and track the sky. Find me on Instagram: @kevinnyunphoto

Happy shooting, and as Alyn Wallace would say: "Clear Skies!"

⚙️ Gear List