Night View of Bodega Bay, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This view is looking north out from the tip of Point Reyes across Bodega Bay. This is a storm-bound, windswept coast, often shrouded in fog, so I was lucky to get clear skies for the star trails.

I exposed the photos used in this stack using my backup camera, a Nikon D200, while I photographed Point Reyes Lighthouse (Edge of Night) with my other camera (a D300). I had two tripods with me, but this one was kind of minature so I had to wedge it into the gap between a sign and the fence.

Compared to the D300, the D200 sensor seems to really heat up, which is where the purple flares come from. I kind of like them. Here’s another example showing the D200 sensor flaring, these star circles are from Yosemite at night.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lans at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 12 exposures each at 4 minutes, f/4, and ISO 100, total exposure time about 48 minutes, stacked in Photoshop using the Statistics action, tripod mounted using a minature tripod wedged between a National Park Service sign and a safety fence.]