Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Rainbow Milky Way Joshua Tree National Park

This image represents a large-scale panoramic Milky Way photograph captured at Joshua Tree National Park.

The final image is a wide-field panorama composed of 40 individual exposures, stitched together to reveal the full Milky Way arch stretching across the desert sky. This post focuses on the panoramic process itself — showing the individual frames, the intermediate stitched result, and how the final image was formed.

Milky Way panorama: 40 images
Canon EOS Ra, EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II USM
f/2.8 · ISO 25600 · 4.8 sec

Rainbow Milky Way arch over Joshua Tree National Park — 40-photo panorama by astroval.

Below are examples of individual frames used to build the panorama. Each image captures only a small section of the sky, but together they form the complete Milky Way arch.

Single exposure for Milky Way panorama at Joshua Tree National Park.

Single photo 1 for Panorama

Single photo 2 for Panorama

Single photo 3 for Panorama

Single photo 4 for Panorama

After capturing all frames, I used Photoshop → File → Automate → Photomerge to stitch the images into a single panorama.

Milky Way panorama after initial Photomerge in Photoshop — curved horizon before geometric correction, Joshua Tree National Park.

Panorama after Automate Photomerge

At this stage, the Milky Way arch was complete, but the horizon appeared noticeably curved — a common effect of automated panorama stitching. The software prioritizes smooth blending between frames, often at the expense of geometric realism.

In the final step, I manually corrected and leveled the horizon in Photoshop using Select → All followed by Edit → Transform → Warp, while preserving the true curvature of the Milky Way. This transformation turned the temporary stitched image into the final panoramic photograph shown at the top of the post — closely matching how the scene appeared under the dark skies of Joshua Tree National Park.