Unfortunately you can’t see the Milky Way in my back garden. Southend is far too light polluted for that. Even on a clear, moon free night, I can struggle to see many of the major constellations. But if I stacked enough photos, I wondered if the imaging information was still there. And sure enough, it is.

This is what you actually see from my garden at about midnight a few weeks ago. This is a 5s esposure, iso 3200, with a Panasonic GF7 camera and a widefield lens.

Stack a couple of dozen of these and do some very heavy processing and you can, just, tease out an image of the Milky Way.

OK, this is actually a terrible photo. But it shows that the information is there, so it might be worth my while exploring this and trying out some different post processing options (and there are thousands of them).

My grandfather was born in the late 19th century in rural Ireland. He would have seen this most clear nights and have taken it for granted, just like generations before him. Even my father, born in 1905, would probably have seen this as a boy. Now I feel chuffed that I can get any image of it at all.

Just processed another batch. I think this came out just a bit better.