Three Lights in the Night

“Three Lights in the Night” was captured on August 13, 2026, at the Plemmirio Marine Protected Area in Syracuse, Sicily. The image portrays the Plemmirio Lighthouse beneath a clear summer night sky, where several astronomical landmarks can be identified, including the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), Cassiopeia and Perseus. On the left side of the frame, a Perseid meteor crosses the sky, creating a brief and unexpected streak of light.

The composition was conceived as a dialogue between the terrestrial landscape and the distant universe. The lighthouse, with its familiar and human presence, contrasts with the immense scale of the celestial objects above it. The Andromeda Galaxy, located approximately 2.5 million light-years away, adds a particularly striking sense of depth to the scene, while the Perseid captures a fleeting moment that lasted only a fraction of a second.

The photograph combines 95 tracked exposures of the sky with 7 static foreground exposures. The sky images were stacked to improve signal-to-noise ratio, while the final composition was carefully blended in Photoshop to preserve a natural appearance and maintain the relationship between the landscape and the night sky.

Nikon D750 · Samyang 14mm f/2.8 · Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro astro tracker

DeepSkyStacker for calibration, alignment and stacking of the sky images; Adobe Lightroom Classic for TIFF development; Adobe Photoshop for final processing, blending the tracked sky with the static foreground, and final adjustments.