Rant: drove 90 minutes to a dark site and my best shot was a plane trail through the Pleiades | Astronomy Photos - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Rant: drove 90 minutes to a dark site and my best shot was a plane trail through the Pleiades
Last Friday I packed up my rig at 4pm and drove out to a spot near Joshua Tree because the forecast said clear skies and no moon until 2am. Got there, set everything up, and the first 20 subs looked great, sharp stars, no wind, I was feeling good. Then around 11 a guy pulls up 40 feet away, leaves his headlights on for 10 solid minutes while he "gets his stuff together," and every frame in that stretch is toast. I ended up with 47 usable lights out of 83, stacked them anyway, and got a weird bright streak right across the Seven Sisters that I'm 90 percent sure is a plane, not a satellite. The one genuinely cool thing was a meteor caught in frame 12, but of course it's in one of the ruined shots. Anyone else have a spot where you just can't escape people, or is it time to find somewhere with a gate?
So what's the actual harm here, that you lost some subs or that you got a plane trail you can clone out in five minutes? A gate isn't going to stop someone from pulling in and blasting their headlights, and honestly most of those remote spots still get random cars rolling through at 11pm anyway. Sounds like the real issue was timing, not the location, because 47 good lights is still a solid night.