A ship passes in the dead of night

The Pleiades above a storm  «  Back to Gallery  »  A menagerie of celestial objects above Gull Rock   🛒 Visit our gallery of prints.

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Image © 2022 — 2023 Jeremy Likness. All rights reserved.
The clouds engulfed the entire sky when I took this 8-minute exposure. It was near black when I started the exposure, but the light from a passing ship blazed like a false sunrise.
Telescope:   Sony ILCE-6300
Length:   12mm
Aperture:   6mm
F-stop:   f/2.0
Sessions:   1
Captured:   2023-02-20 to 2023-02-20
Lights:   1
Exposure:   480
Total exposure:   8 m
Related images
The Oregon Coast is not the best place for astrophotography because of the clouds, but sometimes you just work with them. While a storm was raging and blowing rain on our balcony, I looked up and realized I could see stars on top of the clouds. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is just to the left of center. If you connect the galaxy to two bright stars left, the three of them point to a soft blur that is the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).
I couldn't resist taking a long exposure to capture colorful star trails over the Pacific Ocean.
These are stars appearing above storm clouds hovering over the turbulent Pacific Ocean as it dashes against Gull Rock.
The Seven Sisters were a barely visible bright patch of light I could just make out with my peripheral vision. A long camera exposure revealed M45: the Pleiades visible over the edge of a storm hovering directly over Gull Rock.

Objects in frame:

Oregon Coast
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IC5070: The Pelican Nebula in Hydrogen alpha »