I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had gone out to Chandler Hovey park on Sunday at sunset hoping to catch the tail end of a large coronal mass ejection with promises of auroras in the night sky.  I was fortunate that a nice sunset developed and, after capturing it, returned to the car to warm up (it was in the 30s but the wind was whipping across the water) and change to my wide angle lens.  I then set up this composition and waited.

The tricky part with stars is that the camera is able to capture much more than the eye can take in.  With that in mind, I headed out each time the website that claims to predict auroras chimed with a spike in activity.  This went on for over an hour until the spikes started getting smaller and farther apart.  I had my fingers crossed when I got home but couldn’t find any green or purple streaks across the too bright sky.  Instead, I decided to make due with what the camera did capture…plenty of stars.

This was a tricky shot to capture and actually required layering a number of different images taken between sunset and late into the night to arrive at the final image.  There is a strong overhead light at the park that washed the foreground in a sickly orange that I overcame by bringing in a shot taken at sunset.  The final image feels more natural than the orange tinted ground it replaced.