Northern Stars over Ribbon Falls and El Capitan
The full moon illuminated the north wall of Yosemite Valley on the night of 2023-07-03. Ribbon Falls is usually not flowing by this time of year, but with the record setting snowpack from last winter, it was still active. My aim was to make the granite walls look like how they did to my eyes that night. The sky is a stack of 4 images that were processed in PixInsight before being combined with the land in Photoshop. It makes the sky much more filled with stars than it appeared, but it was amazing to me how much more the camera picked up with 25 second exposures, even with such bright moonlight. The Milky Way is even faintly visible on the right edge of the picture. Polaris appears directly over Ribbon Falls, though it may be hard to pick out. The Big Dipper is at the left edge of the photo.
It was really difficult to deal with the strong gradients from the full moon, but I'm mostly satisfied with this result.
Northern Stars over Ribbon Falls and El Capitan
The full moon illuminated the north wall of Yosemite Valley on the night of 2023-07-03. Ribbon Falls is usually not flowing by this time of year, but with the record setting snowpack from last winter, it was still active. My aim was to make the granite walls look like how they did to my eyes that night. The sky is a stack of 4 images that were processed in PixInsight before being combined with the land in Photoshop. It makes the sky much more filled with stars than it appeared, but it was amazing to me how much more the camera picked up with 25 second exposures, even with such bright moonlight. The Milky Way is even faintly visible on the right edge of the picture. Polaris appears directly over Ribbon Falls, though it may be hard to pick out. The Big Dipper is at the left edge of the photo.
It was really difficult to deal with the strong gradients from the full moon, but I'm mostly satisfied with this result.