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Video of the area at Grand Prismatic Springs

 

 

How this image was built

 

First Stitch of Ground:

 

 

First Stitch of Sky:

 

 

Combine the two panoramas and you have the image submitted for APOD consideration.  Some obvious tweaks that I learned from deep space astrophotography but that’s how I did it.

24 frames for the sky (6 columns 4 rows) and 18 for the ground. The total exposure is just over 33 minutes in the 42 frames.

 

All 42 frames available for review at any time.

 

Side Notes:

Hats frequently blow off of peoples heads here, mainly since there are no trees to break the wind. I assume the Rangers come get them with sticks at some point but there were 8-10 of them in the upper area. I included a close up of one with the reflections around it. Just for fun.

While I was shooting the ground, my other camera and tripod in the distance were gathering the stars. So the ground shot is technically a camera shot of a camera shot capturing the stars.

 

Interesting side story.

 As I was waiting for it to get dark enough to shoot I noticed a young man and his girlfriend taking some Milky Way images about where I planned to shoot the ground shots from. I started the images of the sky then walked to this spot. The young man whose name I have forgotten said he had come to America because of a shot he wanted to show me on his phone. It was one I took in 2015. When I told him I took it he got excited showed me several more of my shots and insisted on a selfie. So we took one and after telling me I was very famous in China he paused for a few moments and then asked: “Are you here all the time?”

I laughed said no and then realized the shots were over so we had been talking in the dark for 20 minutes. Such is life on the road, you really never know what you are going to get.