Milky Way at KOFA - National Wildlife Refuge in Western Arizona
KOFA - is short for King of Arizona mine, from 150 years ago, who would stamp their gold bars as K of A. KOFA is a 600,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge in Western Arizona, which is a bortle 2 dark area. Signal Peak at 4,200 feet there in the center of the image. Center left is the Phoenix light dome 130 miles away, with a smaller light dome on the right side from Gila Bend, 80 miles away, which is a small farming town south west of Phoenix.
This is a stitch of 2 images (60% overlap) captured using a Pentax K1, and Pentax DFA 15-30/f2.8 at 15mm, ISO 800, f2.8, 70 second exposure using Pentax's internal GPS/Astrotracing capability (star tracking). The overall field of view is about 150 degrees wide. Post-processing used LightRoom, just slightly lifting the exposure, contrast and shadows keeping a very natural looking image. The only source of light was the star light at midnight. In both images, no additional color was added or highlighted.
This was captured on the Palm Canyon entrance road, about 2.5 miles from the base of the mountain, about 5 miles off of US95 - facing east. Palm Canyon is where a unique species of palm trees grows from the canyon walls - the only place on earth where this occurs.
