The clearest night of my life in Leavenworth, WA

lattiboy

Regular
Went to a cabin about 5 miles East of Leavenworth, WA. Obviously the long exposure exaggerates the effect, but this was the clearest, brightest night of stars I've ever seen (and I've had some good ones)

Got a funny sensor error or something in the upper right corner of the second photo. Weirdest damn thing.

Sony RX100 mk3, ISO3200, f/1.8, 15 seconds. Taken at about 1AM on Saturday and Sunday morning, respectively.


1)
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2)
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It is magical isn't it! I had a similar experience in Australia. It felt as through the stars were pressing on my very eyeballs!
 
Got a funny sensor error or something in the upper right corner of the second photo. Weirdest damn thing.

I've seen that string-of-beads effect before, but I haven't seen a good explanation for it. We're probably looking at a trail made by a pair of aircraft lights, which were not flashing. I suspect that the string of beads appearance is an artefact resulting from long exposure times and the application of noise reduction or image stacking within the camera, but that's just a guess.

-R
 
Thinking in terms of a traditional film camera set for a long exposure, flashing lights would make a series of dashes across the image and continuous lights would make a continuous line.

But we're seeing something else here, which is a continuous line which brightens up briefly at regular intervals. I did wonder whether the plane in the picture was doing exactly that - could it have one set of lights on continuously and some additional flashing lights which make the beads? But then you would expect to see a separation between string and bead, since aircraft carry flashing navigation lights on their wingtips whereas landing lights are more centrally mounted I think.

I have a feeling that the last time this subject came up, it related to a very long exposure of star trails, which showed the same beads (and where the stars definitely weren't flashing). I'll see if I can find that thread.

-R
 
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