I thought I would close out this leg of my night time images with the image that sparked the inspiration for the entire series – this image of the Orion constellation rising behind Mt Leconte, as seen from the Carlos C Campbell overlook.  I may have mentioned this previously, but when I was brainstorming for this series, I thought to myself, what are the scenes that define the Smokies, and how can I shoot them at night.  Well of course, this view from the Carlos C. Campbell overlook immediately came to mind because I’d just been there shooting the fall colors last autumn and thinking what an iconic vista it is.  Well, fast-forward however many months and you’ve seen a number of the ideas I’ve come up with, and my shot list for the Smokies is ever-expanding – which is funny, because for a while I was completely out of ideas.

For this week’s image I wanted to share a few more down in the Alternative Perspectives section.  Above, as I mentioned, is the Orion constellation, all shot at 50mm.  As with the Zeta Ophiucus last summer, I became particularly fascinated with the Angelfish nebula this winter.  These massive hydrogen alpha objects are mind-blowingly big, and oddly circular in shape from our vantage point here on Earth.  At any case, if you scroll down you’ll see a zoomed in image (100mm) image of that portion of the sky.  Also featured below is the Witchhead nebula, which can be seen in the image above toward the right side of the image, about two thirds of the way up.  The below image is oriented differently than the one above to illustrate why they call it the Witchhead nebula.  The source data for that image came from Telescope.live but the processing is mine.

I hope you’ll tune in again next week when we’ll hit the road to a new-to-me country and region!

–Dan Thompson