As the southern Milky Way typically becomes visible in this latitude of the northern hemisphere in March, it is usually when I take my first trip of the year. This year the moon cycle dictates that the week around new moon is early in the month, which for this trip meant very little time with the rising core of the galaxy before twilight. As I also had to schedule a bit early due to a trip to FL, I spent some time with the moon, and ended up never seeing the southern Milky Way due to an abundance of weather.
That being said, many evenings were clear, giving me great opportunity to photograph spring Zodiacal Light, the reflection of our sun off of dust particles in our solar system. Anyone who has spent time in a dark location in the spring may have seen it emerge shortly after sunset, though many do not know what they are looking at. When it’s dark, the ‘wedge’ of Zodiacal Light extends 30-40° up into the sky, and can be quite bright near the horizon (it can look like light pollution from a nearby town, except the light is actually a blue-ish grey).
This was my first field outing with the new Canon R5 mirrorless camera, which replaced my aging-but-trusty 5Ds, my main workhorse of the last 6 years. Had a few growing pains with the R5’s IBIS (in-body image stabilization) system doing some wonky things, and hopefully Canon will provide a firmware update to address some of the IBIS system’s aberrant behavior. A trio of new Sigma Art lenses rounded out this trip: the 14/1.8, the venerable 40/1.4, and the since-replaced 85/1.4 (sent it back due to excessive purple fringing, replaced with the Art 105/1.4).
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