A trip to The Badlands

If you're following me on Instagram, you may remember that I took an astro trip to South Dakota and Wyoming back in May. To be transparent, this was my first trip since going to Texas last April. That's 14 months without a proper night under dark skies, the longest break I've taken since I started doing this professionally.
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Somewhere along the way, social media sort of trained my brain to believe that if a trip isn't more epic than the last one, it won't stand out. Every adventure needed to top the previous one: a bigger mosaic, a rarer alignment, some impossible once-in-a-lifetime shot. That kind of thinking is not sustainable!
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So I gave myself one unique goal for this trip: rewire my brain to enjoy the process and stop fixating on the outcome (difficulty: impossible). Go with the flow a little more. Enjoy being out there with my friends, and let the images be a byproduct of a good adventure instead of the entire reason for it.

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This whole trip wouldn't be possible without my friends over at Vanna Adventure Vans; shoutout to them. They hooked me up with their two-person van called "Vanny DeVito," and I have to say it was the BEST van experience I've ever had. This thing had it all: a shower, a sink, toilet, queen-sized bed, heater, AC, solar panels, etc! This company is in my hometown and was founded by a friend so it was really cool to collaborate with him on this project!

After picking up my usual co-pilot for these adventures, Arne, we made our way 5 hours across North Dakota to our first camping spot in the Little Missouri National Grasslands.

We rolled into our campsite around 12am and were greeted by a sky full of clouds. After a long day on the road, we took advantage of the night off and got a solid night of sleep! The view in the morning was incredible. North Dakota's grasslands are super underrated, meaning we had the whole place to ourselves.

Our next destination was a four hour drive south to a place I have never explored: The Badlands!

Unfortunately, we arrived to clouds once again. This time, though, we had a gap in the clouds for roughly 20 minutes, so I got a tracked shot from our dispersed camping spot right outside the national park.

More importantly, at around 1am, we were finally joined by a good friend, Matt Zefi (after he drove 8+ hours from Montana)!

The following day, Arne worked from the van, then we scouted the surrounding area and I made some dinner for the guys before our night of shooting in the park. Oh, and we caught a beautiful sunset during dinner.

I didn't have a grand plan for that night's shooting itinerary. To be honest, I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of on-the-fly decision-making these trips demand.

Quick question for you: when you travel, are you the type of person who plans out every activity before you leave, or more of a go-with-the-flow type? (Doesn't have to be an astro trip, even a regular vacation counts.)

Here's the thing about astrophotography trips specifically: it's entirely possible to plan one big epic alignment months in advance, down to the exact minute the Milky Way lines up with your subject. But on a longer trip like this one, with multiple locations and uncertain weather, that kind of planning only takes you so far. You have to stay flexible and be good at planning on the go, for places you've never physically seen. That's a skill of its own, and after 14 months off, mine was rusty.

So that night we just went with the flow and checked out the spots along the main road in the park. At the start of the night we had to wait out the moon, which made for the perfect opportunity to get some shots of the van.

Once the moon set, it was time to get to work! Despite being cloudless, the night provided us with some pretty challenging conditions, with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour (I'm guessing) and temperatures in the mid-thirties (before accounting for wind-chill). Not only was it cold, but the wind made it really tough to keep long exposures sharp. Here's the first of two images I captured that night:

This one was shot on my Nikon Z5ii and adapted Sony 24 GM, tracked on the MSM Nomad for 90s per sub, 43 subs. I was really impressed at the Ha signal visible from this unmodified camera. I have to say, I really love shooting with the Z5ii - it has an "extended shutter" function where you don't need an external remote to shoot over 30s (unlike my Sony).
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Next, it was mosaic time, and this is where I made a decision for this trip regarding my settings.

In the past, I've always been quite conservative with my aperture due to my concerns about sharpness. Wide open at f/1.2, the stars in the corners of my 50GM stretch and bloat into weird shapes. So typically I'd stop down to f/1.8 or f/2, get excellent sharpness across the frame, and just make up the lost light by shooting longer exposures or stacking more of them.

On this trip, though, I shot everything wide open at f/1.2.

Now, I've been using BlurXterminator in PixInsight for a while to correct star shapes, so the tool itself isn't new to me. What changed is that I realized it's capable of way more than I'd been giving it credit for. I had been treating out-of-camera star sharpness as the priority, figuring it was fine to just shoot longer subs to compensate for the smaller aperture. But when I actually let the 50GM run wide open, BlurX cleans up those corner stars to practically perfect anyway. Check out the difference:
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And the bonus is enormous. A 30 second exposure at f/1.2 gathers nearly the same amount of light (94%) as my usual 90 second exposure at f/2. ONE THIRD OF THE TIME. That means I can either skip stacking entirely or, for the same hours spent standing in the freezing wind, walk away with way, way more data. When clear, moonless hours are the scarcest resource on a trip, getting good data fast is everything. I honestly can't believe I wasn't doing this for the past few years. This meme perfectly describes my journey 😂.

Anyway, here's the resulting mosaic image and a few crops from it so you can really see the detail:

Since this one is getting a bit long, I'll save the next location of my adventure for the next email. As a preview: that's where my rusty planning skills really got put to the test, and where I came the closest to packing it in for the night... about an hour before stumbling onto the most exciting composition I of the trip so far!
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Talk soon,
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Mike