People have been asking about the astrophotography.
Fair enough. We’ve spent the last several posts talking about Nicholas destroying his body for these shots. Three consecutive nights at extreme altitude. Zero sleep. Getting sick. Sleeping on a literal mountain. All for photos that are still sitting on an SD card in a camera bag in a Himalayan lodge.
We don’t have a computer up here. The Z9 files are massive and there’s no way to properly edit them on a phone. But Nicholas pulled one frame off the camera, opened it on his phone, and did a quick color grade so you can at least see what all the suffering was about.
This is not the final edit. This is a phone preview of a raw file. It’s going to look a little blown out, a little rough around the edges. The real versions will come when we’re home with actual monitors and actual software.
But even rough, it’s something.
First, here’s what the location looks like during the day. This is the Sherpa Memorial at Chukpi Lhara, near Lobuche. Nicholas scouted it during the afternoon hike and immediately started planning the night shoot.
And here’s what it looks like at 3 AM.
The Milky Way. The Galactic Center. Arcing over the entire Himalayan skyline, with the snow on the peaks still faintly visible in the starlight. Thousands of stars, dust lanes, nebular structure. The valley below disappearing into darkness with a single point of light from Dingboche far below.
This is one frame from one night. There are three more nights of timelapses on that SD card.
The full edits are coming when we get home. For now, this preview will have to do.