A lighthouse embedded in Milky Way and a setting Moon&Mars

We will attempt to shoot a full Milky Way arch over the Pt Judith lighthouse. The lighthouse is very bright, but we will be 1000-2000 ft away to diminish its light, but we can also walk to the light and shoot just the south end crossing over the light.

Cloud forecast is for 15%, hopefully this will improve. 75F, low winds. We will have a 22% moon in the sky until 11:26, and it has Mars right next to it, making for an excellent second object to photograph, so bring your long lens, too. A 400mm lens will frame both very nicely, see photos section for a 400mm view. Moon/Mars streak, anyone?

To shoot a Milky Way arch, you need to have some means of leveling your tripod. Ideally, you have a leveling base under your ball head. If your ball head itself doesn't have a spirit level, bring a small level. Your ball heads needs to be able to rotate (pan) in 30 degree increments. If you want to avoid parallax you also need to have a nodal slide.
And here is an article about how to use it.

Bring wide lenses, you can do this with 14 mm (full frame), better 20 mm, but some folks do it with as much as 50mm, but then you have to stitch a lot of images together. I found the 20mm solution very useful, the 14 mm will ensure that you get the top of the Milky Way into the composition without having to do two rows of images. Whatever lens you bring, it should have at least an f/2.8 aperture, if not wider (2.0, 1.8, 1.4, 1.2...). Also bring your 200-600mm lens for the moonset, if you want to photograph that.

Tripod, (leveling base, nodal slide, level), intervalometer, hiking boots (you will be roaming around on a very rocky beach!), bug spray, fluids.

We will talk about the shooting and stitching onsite, come on time. Sunset is 8:25pm, it will be mid-tide rising. This event will be heavily weather dependent, watch the comments for updates.

No guests, as always. Make sure to go to the right parking lot, see map.