This is the base layer for the other star trails panoramas. The bright light in the ocean to the left of the Milky Way is Southwest Head Lighthouse on Grand Manan Island, about 13 miles away. The one to the right is Little River Lighthouse in Cutler, Maine, about 1.25 miles away. The towers right of that are the Navy’s VLF transmitters to communicate to submarines in the Atlantic. Part of the Big Dipper can be seen reflecting in the pool, but it is hard to make out in the sky amongst all the other stars. The green glow on the rocks to the right of the pool is a bioluminescent beetle of some sort. We saw quite a few of them and I’m not sure what their proper name is.
I shot two spheres: one with 30 second exposures for the Milky Way with sharp stars, the other with 241 second exposures for detail in the ground. Each sphere consists of 13 photos. I also shot two dark frames and removed hot pixels via Pixel Fixer instead of using long exposure noise reduction in camera. This way I was able to capture each sphere faster without waiting twice as long. It took about an hour to capture all the photos for both spheres. Masking the two together in Photoshop took a lot of work, especially of the sky through the trees. I discovered it was easier to mask the two exposures together for each frame before stitching with PTGui Pro.
Shooting data: Nikon D700 & 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 2500, and 2 exposures of 30 seconds and 241 seconds, 13 positions.
