A Star is Born!

I went to Buckman Springs, near San Diego, to try my luck at shooting the star trails over this abandoned building along Old Highway 80. The earth rotates around the Polaris(North Star-seen on the far right top of the photo) and this composite photograph captures the rotation of the earth, the stars creating a seemingly trail around the North Star.

For my friends who are not avid astrophotographers, here is some technical information. I shot a total of over 60 frames, each exposed for 60 seconds. Then I took them into an application called StarStax and 'stacked' the images and this is what I came up with. It was then edited in Lightroom to 'develop' the photograph. When you do not open up the aperture too wide, then the chances of capturing the stars in color is a possibility, which you see here. Not all stars emit white light. And since it was a long exposure (60 seconds vs. fraction of a second), I did not need a very wide aperture.

***Do you notice the face of a young woman in the window around the middle of the shot towards the bottom? That is a real cool graffiti painted by, I think, an awesome artist. It is very realistic and I just love it. The woman seems a bit sad to me, but beautiful. My friend lit her up and the angle of the shot was such that I was able to capture this graffiti in the window. It is actually on an adjacent wall of the abandoned building but appears like the sad looking young woman is peering in the window!

And I hope you notice the star trails appearing through the window on the top right side of the photo. I get very excited about things like this! I have become very fond of this shot and thought I'd share it here on my page as I have done on a few astrophotography FB pages and Instagram.

I have taken pains to edit it (I am normally very impatient, lol!) to make it as realistic as possible. The stars were brilliant that night, but as the night progressed, the clouds started creeping up over the building almost looking like there was light behind the mountains.

With so much light pollution all over the world in the name of progress, it is really difficult to find places where light pollution is minimal. So even though we live in such a metropolis such as San Diego, I feel we are lucky to not have to go too far to find some dark skies.

Hope you enjoy the explanation and the composite photograph! Feel free to comment and free to express your emotions upon seeing this shot...thanks!

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