This shot was taken on a clear night this morning coinciding with the peak period of the Perseid Meteor Shower. I saw quite a few but not so many captured by the camera. Although I have taken a lot of Star Trail Shots this was my first attempt at shooting the Milky Way. Pagham Harbour is a nature reserve a mile from home and a gap in the coastal sprawl of light pollution. Apart from some small towns to the west which show in the picture the next towns are in France 100 miles away. I checked on suitable settings. These are not accurate in Exif as the Fisheye is a manual lens. I used my widest aperture of f3.5, 30 seconds and ISO of 30 seconds. Most wide angle lens require 20-25 seconds to avoid movement showing in the stars. With the Fisheye I was able to go to 30 seconds. The moon set at 12.20am and I took shots from then until 1.00am using the in camera Noise Reduction and a remote trigger device. It was quite warm at 16C and no problem with condensation.

I used a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8m. Taken with a Tripod looking south over the Harbour at low tide. One perseid captured on the left.

A lot of steps were taken in the processing to bring out the milky way starting with a brightness contrast adjustment layer with a mask to confine the effect to the milky way. This was followed by Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Clarity. A brightness adjustment with a mask was used to bring out the foreground a little. A Photoshop Action was used from Astronomy Tools to reduce the light pollution.