Spillway Milky Way, Part II: Night photography at Kinkaid Lake Spillway

Micah and I had been discussing going to shoot the Milky Way since early April.  It would be his first time trying to do astrophotography and I was looking forward to nerding out teaching him all the techniques that I have learned in the last two years.

  I got out on a nice night in April near the house at Crab Orchard Lake, but May wasn't coming together like we had planned.  Every night near the new moon was forecasted to be cloudy and we canceled the two nights that we had hoped to get out.  But, a few nights later, I was looking at the weather forecast and it said that it was clearing up THAT NIGHT!

I had just gotten home from a 9-mile walk with Lucy at Tunnel Hill, so Laura was kind enough to go outside and verify that the clouds were dissipating as I laid on the living room floor.  The next few hours were a back-and-forth, wishy-washy mess that resulted in Micah, another friend, Keoni, and I deciding to give it a shot at Kinkaid Lake spillway.  We headed out in separate vehicles to meet up just after midnight, just in time (so I thought) to capture the Milky Way over the falls.

I got there before the others.  My plan was to cross the creek near the bottom splash pool and shoot a picture of the Milky Way rising over the downriver section of the Big Muddy.  Unfortunately, the water was too deep, even for this 6'5" guy in chest waders.  I prodded with my walking stick and couldn't find a shallow spot in the dark.  So, I headed over to the parking for the dam and took this photo over the field as Keoni and I waited for Micah to arrive. The fireflies added some whimsy to the photo.  We ended up seeing way more at the top of the dam.

A warning about these Milky Way pictures: We could see the Milky Way in this location with our naked eyes, but not anywhere near as distinctly as in these photographs.  The camera can record the light much longer than your eyes/brain can and I apply some enhancements to the resulting images.  To see this kind of detail with your eyes, you really have to travel to much darker places in the world.  I just say that so someone isn't heartbroken when they get to any spot in Illinois and expect to see this:

I had never accessed the top of the spillway from the dam, but helpful folks on The Shawnee National Forest facebook group told me it could be done.  Drone video by Mark Chambers convinced me that there would be enough spots that we could each shoot without getting in each other's way.  I had used Photopills to figure out the timing of the alignment between the Milky Way core and the spillway flow.  Luckily Keoni had been there in daylight, so led us to a spot where we shimmied down the rocks to the falls below.  After all that homework, I didn't have it right.  I thought the Milky Way would rise over the spillway at 1am, but once we got there, we realized it wouldn't even be visible over the trees until 2am and not over the falls until 3am.  Bummer.

Micah and Keoni had the bright idea to go back atop the dam, where they would have elevation and angles on their side to see the Milky Way sooner.  I did an about-face, turning around and shooting up the falls instead of down the falls, in an attempt to create a star-trail image.  As I walked around in the shallows below the first cascade of the falls searching for just the right angle, I spotted glowing eyes.  A raccoon was walking up the opposite shoreline, looking for dessert in the rocks.  Micah later spotted two different helgramites, which I'm sure would be very appetizing to a raccoon.

There were some clouds moving through while I captured the foreground images for the star trails composite.  One of the 7-minute exposures for the foreground had some streaks of clouds that I was really excited about.  You can also see the stars starting to trail during the seven minutes as the earth was spinning about its axis.

After capturing the multiple foreground images, I captured 130-some-odd pictures of the stars over a period of about 65 minutes.  I sequentially merged them to produce this timelapse (best viewed full-screen)

I merged all of them together to produce the following composite.  The center of the circle is Polaris, the north star:

While the camera was shooting away, I went to go check on Micah and Keoni.  Keoni had gone home, but I hung out with Micah atop the dam and near the lakeshore for a while.  He was busy photographing the thousands of lighting bugs in the grassy field.  I wished that I had a second night-capable camera to capture him with his headlamp standing in a sea of glowing fireflies.  I didn't get that photo, but he did get some really cool shots.

It was starting to "sock in" with clouds, so I wasn't optimistic about my star trails or any chance at the Milky Way later.  Micah photographed the clouds over the lake for a while and then he set up for some star trails in a pocket of clear sky.  At that point, I had been planning to just go recover my camera and give up.

As we made our way to the spillway, the clouds parted in the direction of the Milky Way, and hope was restored!  There was only about 1 hour until the start of twilight, but I decided to try to squeeze in two different compositions.

Meanwhile: Micah used his phone and some creative lighting to take these awesome photos of me at work!

Photo of me setting up the first shot: by Micah Miller

Photo of me setting up the second shot: by Micah Miller

By the time I finished the second, the sky was already lightening.  We packed up and headed back to grab Micah's camera on the way to the parking lot.

I snapped these shots of the early morning light over the lake with my phone as we walked back.  I knew that if I got the camera out, I would be there another hour and was way too tired for that. Not five minutes later, the sky was almost completely covered with clouds.  What serendipity!  As we chatted about the night back at the cars, several bats swooped overhead feeding upon the many insects flying above the field.

Besides a great night under the stars, some camaraderie, and some photos that I was pleased with, I also came away with a huge appreciation for my new tripod.  I had recently purchased a tripod that is so big that I can hardly reach the camera when it is fully extended, and I'm 6'5".  It's a bit heavy to lug around, but it was well worth packing up the hill on this night.  The star trails shot I took required the camera to be inches from the water for nearly two hours, but I was confident leaving it there because the tripod was so solid.  Another shot required the camera to be several inches over my head, something that was previously unattainable.  But, I was able to jack it up high, inches from the drop of the waterfall without worry.  So worth it!

The forecast wasn't looking too great for the next several nights, but those forecasts are always subject to change ;)