June 26, 2019
Star Trail centered on Polaris.
After dusk had turned into night it was time to setup my shots. I shot relatively close to the road that leads up to Barker Dam. I setup the camera to shoot the time lapse on the east side of the road and the camera to shoot this star trail on the west. Due to the proximity to the road I did encounter one technical problem, I got some shots with a lens reflection from the taillights of the passing cars. I ended up having to process those shots separately to remove the discolorization form the taillights and then processing the shots in the star stacking software. You’ll notice that there a quite a few aircraft trails and a glow at the horizon right of center. Joshua Tree is north of the flight path for jets flying from the east coast into LA and south of the flight path for flights coming in from Las Vegas, so there’s quite a bit of air traffic. I hadn’t noticed this as much in my previous shoots at Joshua Tree. There are also three noticeable light domes: 29 Palms and it Marine base, a dim but still noticeable one to the west from the Los Angeles basin, and one towards the south from Palm Springs. The exposure for the star trail was 2 hours(240 shots at 30 seconds each).
