Star Trails over Gateway, Colorado’s Palisade; 7 October 2022
Star Trails over Gateway, Colorado’s Palisade
Capture & processing notes
Traveled to Gateway Resort and Spa to celebrate a friend’s special (all birthdays are cause for celebration, but x-0 and x-5 birthdays require extra special celebrations!). We did some dark sky location scouting on the way there, but didn’t plan to do any DSO imaging. I did plan to take advantage of the landscape to capture the star trails over the Mesa and Palisade. The Mesa, while a beautiful setting, had too much ambient light and was facing south – creating star trails that were very faint and looked like crooked lines in the image. The Palisade, on the other hand, was positioned “correctly” with respect to the Resort and Spa to be able to capture a northern-facing star trail image. The ambient light from the resort also precluded long exposures. The fear of leaving the equipment sitting out by itself on the resort grounds and the cool night temperatures (after I’d already spent an hour standing outside attempting to capture the Mesa star trails and Milky Way), limited the amount of time I was willing to spend standing and babysitting the capture. Thus, this image is a bit “spotty” with respect to the trails. But the nightscape is beautiful none-the-less!
Sequence Plan: ISO 3200, 100×20 seconds; Captured, 7Oct2022, 2129 – 2228MDT.
Equipment: Canon EOS 5DSR, Sigma 14mm 1.8 DG lens, on static tripod. Controlled with Pixel Pro TW-283 E3 Wireless Shutter Release Remote Control
Capture: 7 October 2022
Shooting location: Gateway Resort and Spa; Gateway, Colorado
Processing: Stacked in Sequator; processed in LR/PS