30/12/2021
Silver Gate
After a week of cloudy and quite often rainy weather, finally we got blessed with clear skies. That was my chance to capture some of the long-awaited objects of the southern night sky. I imagined this scene way before we arrived in the Seychelles. These million years old giant granite rocks accompanied by The Southern Cross, Alpha Centauri A or the Carina Nebula – just to name a few – put me, the photographer behind the camera, into a perspective. A perspective of vast time and space that characterizes the universe.
Although the image displays a calm and quiet scene, taking it was a rather adventurous process. First of all, shooting on a tripod in the ocean is not easy. The water was in a constant move, sometimes some bigger waves came and I had to make sure that my equipment didn't get harmed. In the meantime, some big fishes swam around my legs, on the beach dozens of crabs were on the go, and the waves made it quite noisy around me.
As the weather is very dynamic around the Equator, I was strongly time limited. I could see some clouds in the distance soaring in slowly, so I had to act quickly. I had my star tracker with me, but I decided not to use it, as I definitely would’ve wasted some precious minutes with the setup and alignment. Aligning so close to the Equator is anyway not easy, as the reference objects are so close to the horizon which is often quite hazy. The night sky itself is absolutely breathtaking, full of bright, colorful and remarkable objects. Swipe through the images for explanation!
