Star Trails and Aurora over Lower Table Rock

About 150 30-second shots of nearby "Table Rock" and the aurora on May 10, 2024, in Southern Oregon. Images were stacked in Photoshop with minor edits done to remove or darken lights in the foreground. My thanks to "Seth", a local photographer who drove up at 11:00 and got me out of my car to look at the back of my camera which was set up to automatically take the shots. The colors in the sky were not evident to the naked eye, especially one that had been reading with a flashlight. It wasn't until I reviewed my images that I saw the brilliant color.

Astro-Modified Canon R6 camera with Canon 15-35 2.8 lens. 150 Star trail images were taken for 28 seconds each. ISO 800, f/3.2 at 21mm focal length. I also used a Vello intervalometer for program triggering, a Really Right Stuff tripod and a ball-head.

I started with 250 shots but the last 100 or so didn't make the cut because they were too bright at ISO 800. Image stacking of the shots was done in Photoshop due to the amount of airplane trails going over the mountain and a light on the property that would go on every 5 shots. Those and the airplane trails were masked out of each shot before the final layering of the image. It was then imported back to Lightroom for darkening of the bottom foreground due to passing car traffic. Finally, a sky selection was made and I darkened it slightly to show off the star trails.