The Milky Way With Air Glow Rising Over The Ocean & Eroded Bluffs At Camp Hero, Montauk, NY 5/21/20

Endless cloudy Jersey skies led to a last minute road trip to Montauk for some of the darkest skies around. Left home at 7:00 pm and arrived at 10:30 pm to crisp, clear sky skies and had the place to ourselves. We hit no traffic on the way, a side benefit of the lockdown.

We explored for 4.5 hours to get in as much as we could. Ended up at the Camp Hero bluffs and the found some amazing cliff erosion. Here is one of the last shots I took of the Milky Way rising over the ocean and eroded cliffs at Camp Hero, Montauk, NY. The red and green bands in the lower sky was airglow from the atmosphere.

Left Montauk at 3:00 am and was home by 6:30 am, a 11.5 hour road trip. I was absolutely exhausted but what an amazing adventure we had! One for the books...

Once we found a good angle on the bluff to take the picture, we setup the shot. Using my 14-24 mm lens at 24 mm, I took eight shots of the sky with 13 second exposures, f/2.8, ISO 6400. For the foreground, I took a 76 second exposure, f/2.8, ISO 2000 to capture more detail and light from the dark cliffs. The eight sky shots were stacked in Sequator and then blended with the long foreground shot in Photoshop, and finally edited in LightRoom. The stacking of the sky shots reduces the noise of the picture, allowing you to shoot shorter exposures at higher ISO (noise) to achieve crisper stars.

From Space