Thars Stars Up Thar

Loads of em' plus a bonus leftover Persied meteor after peak last fall as seen here.

This is another from the land of very little (but still some as you can see) light pollution at Steens Mountain in SE Oregon. If you like night skies, this is a great area to visit!

Image notes: The keys for this shot were very little light pollution, no moon, high ISO (1600) wide aperture (F/3.2) and a relatively short exposure to prevent obvious star trails (30 seconds). A bit of reverse USM (30%, 60 radius, 0 threshold) and ACR clarity (you can open TIFFs as well as RAW in ACR if they are 16bit) helped to further pop the stars.

The foreground was light painted with an extremely bright LED torch from Lowes (Task Force 2 C cell Cree LED flashlight). It was really too bright at 1600 ISO wide open so I had to basically turn it on and paint what I wanted super fast or it completely burned out. I should have probably taken a second exposure at a much lower ISO and could have taken my time light painting and had a much easier go of it. Then later in post combine the two. I think I was just on a kick to get it all in the original untouched shot for this one, whatever original untouched actually means heh.

StarStarsAstronomyAstrophotographyNightEveningSkyLight PaintingOregonORSESteensLandscapeMeteorPerseidsPerseidNikonD300Shooting StarSteens Mountain Wilderness AreaGalaxyAstrometrydotnetversion10887Astrometrydotnetidalpha20090311778953AstrometrydotnetstatussolvedShootingAndromeda2009