Deep Sky Workflows

Taken from the Otter Crest Lookout on Cape Foulweather. From the vantage point several hundred meters above sea level, you can look out across the Pacific Ocean and down the Oregon Coast. I spent an evening there capturing images as the sun set and the bright crescent moon slid across the horizon to illuminate the water and the prominent outcrop known as 'Gull Rock.' I was able to capture the Milky Way despite its proximity to the moon. The buildings in the lower left are part of the Inn at Otter Crest. The first outcrop is a viewing area at the Inn at Otter Crest, and the more distant one is called the Devil's Punch Bowl. The glow you see on the horizon at the edge of the coast is the city of Newport. The glow farther inland is from the city of Toledo. The bright moon made processing interesting. I decided to use one exposure for the land and ocean details (1/45th second at ISO 400 taken earlier) and five 6-second exposures at ISO 4000 for the sky details. I stacked the longer exposures twice: once at full frame, then a second time cropped to just the stars and Milky Way to avoid the saturation caused by the moon. I stacked those together to produce the final result. This is a re-process of older data.

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