Went to Joshua Tree a few weeks ago to get some last shots in of the Milky Way before the core dropped below the horizon. Unfortunately it was a little too late in the season since the core had dropped behind the mountain range and the lights from Palm Springs and the surrounding cities were so bright that it washed out a lot of what I could see. I decided to mess around and do some star trails. I chose to do a 10 second shot every 20 seconds, so roughly 2 shots/minute and then stitch them together aftewards. I set it up a couple of different places and did the following shots while I was there. The app I used to do the stitching was StarStax and this was with the basic settings. I tried to edit out the shots that had satelites or planes in them, unfortunately it made the shots way to choppy and not smooth stars. I need to try and do more shots per minute to give me the ability to edit stuff out or I need to post process the images to remove those items with the clone tool. Also a little bit of lightening in the foreground would be good.
Joseph Jenkins 