photo nelly

Milky Way in Maui

Taken on a moonless night on the sands of Ka'anapali Beach just outside the Sheraton Maui Resort.

Being a techie (not a trekkie!), I have always been fascinated with outer space. I watch The Universe on the History Channel, subscrive to Sky & Telescope, and have Pocket Stars installed on both my laptop and my smartphone. But having lived in the suburbs of Chicago my entire life, I never had the chance to become an avid backyard astronomer.

On our first trip to Maui, I was absolutely blown with just how many stars you could actually see way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There were a few nights that trip where Cindy and I just grabbed the beach towels and spread out on the beach at around 9pm and just admired the majesty of it all.

This photo was taken on our second trip to Maui, in September 2007. I'm not ashamed to admit that getting this photo to come out so well was no less than 110% luck. At that point, I didn't know there was something called Astrophotography was or that using long exposures was the key to shooting pictures like this. I was clueless, I admit it.

Still, even though I wasn't sure of what I was doing, I still got this shot. I had my tripod buried in the sand, pointed towards the horizon and with some trial and error, this beauty appeared. I was just following some simple trial-and-error techniques to find out what works and it turned out well. Now, it's hanging up on the wall in my office at home.

Things to Note

A few quick stories about this photo. First, this was shot with a Canon EOS 20D, which only has a small LCD display screen compared to the ones today. When I first viewed this photo on the camera screen, the Milky Way in the photo looked like it was just a few clouds. With the naked eye, it was still a little hard to make out, and I honestly didn't know it was there.

The following afternoon when I was transferring photos from my memory card to my laptop, I was looking at the photo and realized that those weren't clouds. I just about jumped so high I almost hit the ceiling. One of the happiest moments in my short photography career so far.

The next question I always get is, why is the water glowing like that near Black Rock? The answer... scuba divers (duh). Seriously, though, we never saw them enter the water, they just sort of showed up from behind Black Rock. We saw it getting closer and closer as the night went on and we had no idea what the heck it was. Then, as the light moved closer to shore, it shut off and 3 scuba divers emerged with their gear and their lights and walked back to their scuba shack at the Sheraton. That's one way to beat the crowds, I guess.

About 4 months after I took this photo, I was still fascinated with it. I started thinking about it and wanted to play connect the dots and map out any constellations I might have captured. Looking at a few star maps, they always say start with the brightest star (magnitude) and use it as a reference point. Well, it didn't take long for me to get frustrated with not being able to find that big, bright one right in the center. After a few hours, I gave up for the day. A few days later, I found this photo on Flickr and it was suddenly very clear. That bright thing wasn't a star, it was Jupiter. Sweet!