I like to think Vincent Van Gogh would have enjoyed watching these stars dance over Mount Rainier.
A composite of 112 images shot over an hour on a bitterly cold and gloriously clear night.
Planning:
I went for this shot on an unusually cold and clear early winter day (this is important since the Pacific Northwest we are usually blanketed in cloud cover during the winter - the extreme cold front helped freeze out all of the misty gunk). Per PhotoPills the partial moon was due to rise at 12:30am. The timing of the shot was made such that the moon would rise near the end of the hour-long shot to provide some nice contrasting light on Mount Rainier.
Mount Rainier National Park, WA
Well done on getting the moon exposure right. I'm not quite sure your process with 112 composited images, but the sky looks amazing.
Thanks! The reason for so many captures is to avoid the color noise introduced by a hot sensor after an exposure longer than 3-4 minutes. I did a bunch of 30-second exposures on continuous shutter until the battery died and merged them together in photoshop to make an hour long star trail exposure. It’s actually a pretty common technique for capturing star trails.
I've learned something new today, thanks for the information. Someday I would love to get out and do some astrophotography． I need to take a holiday away from the big city first so I can see more than 10 stars though.