7 Hours of Earth Rotation: Sony A7S III + Rokinon 14mm (Darktable Processing)

7 hours of continuous Earth rotation, captured in ultra-wide 14mm and processed entirely in open-source software! I traveled 400 miles from Austin to Copper Breaks State Park, Texas—a pristine Bortle 2 dark sky site—to shoot a continuous 7-hour evening-to-night timelapse of the Summer Milky Way on July . This was a major experiment for me: it's my first time processing raw astrophotography frames in Darktable! Pushing the ultra-wide Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 at ISO 8000 allowed me to pull out an insane amount of detail from the galactic core while keeping the stars locked in place. 🌌 How it works: Using an equatorial tracker, the camera stays locked onto the stars. Instead of seeing the Milky Way move across the sky, you watch the Earth itself tilt, roll, and spin beneath a static galaxy. 📍 Location: Copper Breaks State Park, Texas (Bortle Class 2) 📅 Date: July 11, 2026 ⏱ Duration: 7 Hours Continuous Tracking (Evening to Night Transition) 📸 Gear Specs: • Camera: Sony A7S III • Lens: Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 • Tracker: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i • Power: Anker 737 Power Bank • Software: Darktable (RAW Processing) ⚙️ Exposure Settings: • 25s Exposure | ISO 8000 | f/2.8 | Ultra-Wide Tracking If you enjoyed this ultra-wide perspective of our spinning planet, drop a comment, like, and subscribe for more astrophotography experiments! #MilkyWay #Astrophotography #EarthRotation #SonyA7SIII #Darktable #Rokinon14mm #TexasNightSky #CopperBreaks #StarAdventurer2i #Timelapse #4K