Interesting Photo of the Day: Erupting Volcano Under the Starry Night Sky

Interesting Photos  •  Night Photography

What’s the best Milky Way shot you’ve ever seen? Photographer Albert Dros planned this photo for a long time. He decided to visit Guatemala and photograph this volcano named ‘Fuego’ after seeing pictures of it. Dros discovered that the clearest photographs of the eruptions took place during the evening and night. Most of the good images he saw of it had a full moon in the sky, so he decided to try something a bit different. His plan to include the Milky Way in the shot behind the eruption resulted in this shot–the research definitely paid off!

“Erupting Volcano Under the Starry Night Sky” by Albert Dros (Via Imgur. Click image to see full size.)

In order to reach this view, Dros stood on top of an inactive volcano nearby named Acatenango. He checked a seismic graph from a signal station that showed the earthquake activity at the Fuego volcano every hour. What he needed after that was a day close to a new moon in the sky and some clear weather to capture it! Some problems he ran into were nights with complete darkness because of the high contrast on the volcano and its eruption. The best Milky Way shots occurred during the blue hour of the morning. This way, the volcano eruption lines up with the Milky Way’s spread across the sky.

In order to capture this image, Dros used a Sony AR7 camera with a FE 55mm lens. His settings were 10 seconds, ISO 3200, and f/1.8.