Milky Way At Pigeon Point Light House

[sury]

Went to Pigeon Point Light House on Oct 16, 2020 to shoot Milky Way.
I tried the Panorama of Milky Way with each slide being bracketed HDR.
This is a 3 slice Panorama stitched with Microsoft ICE
Each slide is a 9 bracket shot composed stacked using Sequator software
Final tweaks in LR5.7
Camera A99M2. Lens Sigma 17-35.
This thread contains same source images tweaked and tried different settings as a progression, if you may call it.





The next two were similar to the first two but tweaked the WB (temperature) to be warmer.

[smulnik]

Really cool, Sury!

[jbtaylor]

Interesting project. Some questions come to mind.
How much time spent on the prep side, capture time, and post production time?
Is there any way to get the lighthouse in focus?
What are your thoughts on the results?
Will there be more attempts?
Thanks.
JT

[sury]

Interesting project. Some questions come to mind.

How much time spent on the prep side, capture time, and post production time?
Prep time did not take long. The images are 30 secs for each of the 9 in the slice, times 3,
making it total of 710 secs of exposure , with another 90 secs for dark frame for each of the slices.

Is there any way to get the lighthouse in focus?
Unless I use a single image, or I use an equatorial mount, or a darker sky resulting in shorter exposures,
I doubt I will ever get that lighthouse in focus. I have single image stacks as well but they all suffer the blurry
lighthouse. May be I try to tweak one of the 9 images and see if I can get acceptable results.

What are your thoughts on the results?
One thing I forgot was to use my Bright Star filter to fine tune the focus to infinity.
I will reduce the exposure and increase the ISO to minimize the trailing. I already managed
to make stars closer to point sources in the last image compared to the first image.
I am debating if my HDR technique is an over kill. Please see the image below.

Will there be more attempts?
Yes, but not until February. For us the Milky Way is below horizon between now and February.
I am hoping to get an arc next year.

Thanks.
You are welcome....
JT

By the way this is a single shot Pano I took at the end 4 images horizontal pano going up.

[ValeryD]

Sury! All shots OK, but last one probably the best shot!

[jbtaylor]

I agree with ValeryD.
Maybe in this setting, less is more.
We will see in February.

[sury]

The issue is one of capturing the details in the milky way. I should have tried focus stacking as well.
I find HDR giving me more details in the milky way. Well, on to keep trying....

These are not Panos. But HDRs

[aster]

.

These are pretty interesting, Sury.
I enjoyed seeing so many stars all at once - thanks to you - and in so many colours, too.

The last photo of the previous set is very like a champagne bottle popping due to the positioning of the lighthouse and the Milkyway .
Good work all along.

Thanks for sharing,
Yildiz

[sury]

Yildiz,
Thank you. It was lot of fun.

Sury