Lagoon-Stissing Alignment
Taken by James Perez-Rogers on August 21, 2025 @
Pine Plains, NY
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Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable
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Details:
A photo-composite of multiple exposures:
Story:
A personal goal of my astrophotography is to find deep space targets that can be aligned with terrestrial objects. I learned of the Stissing Firetower through a friend from work, and after a day-time scouting mission, I knew it had tremendous potential. I used Stellarium and The Photographers Ephemeris to determine which deep space objects could align with this tower.
The Lagoon Nebula (M8) is located within the Milkyway, and as of this year, was a first-time target for me. Though I attempted this photograph several times this year with no success (due to clouds, fog, wind, and dew), I was determined to see it work. I set up my scope earlier in the night, and captured the exposures of M8 that would be used for the final sky image.
As my Star Adventurer GTI tracked M8 across the sky, I waited until Stissing Mountain began to show in my frames and switched to shorter exposures. Once the Nebula was aligned with the tower, I grabbed a photograph for precise alignment in post-production, and turned off the tracker to capture the untracked 5 minute exposure of the foreground.
EXIF:
Sony A7ii
Sony 200-600mm lens
F8
Sky: (ISO3200)
13 x 2 minute subexposures tracked at 600mm
Foreground:
1 x 5 minute subexposure untracked at 600mm
Editing Process:
x13 Light frames aligned and stacked using a mean stack mode in Photoshop. Stacked image was calibrated and corrected using Pixinsight and edited in Lightroom. the single untracked exposure of the tower was edited in Lightroom to match the color and tone profiles of the sky exposure and then the two were manually blended together in Photoshop. Final edits were performed in Lightroom.
Also included is a Behind-the-scenes shot of the camera equipment and the setting.
Photographer's website:
https://www.jamesperezrogers.com
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