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Diamonds in the sky

Vikas Chander from New Dehli, India

Barnard’s Loop, the Pleiades (M45), and the California Nebula (NGC 1499) are just some of the deep-sky objects aglow with ionized hydrogen in the sky over an abandoned washing plant at a diamond mine in the Sperrgebiet (“forbidden territory”) of southwestern Namibia. Th photographer used an astromodified Sony mirrorless camera at ISO 800 and zoom lens at 20mm and f/2.8 to capture one hour of sky exposures and an 8-minute ground exposure.