Milky Way clues at Coos Bay

3 days ago

4 min read

This month has been crazy! My wife and I were out picking blackberries when she tripped and fell onto the pavement of the parking lot. She managed to break her left leg and right arm and was unable to do much of anything for several weeks. She’s bounced back and is doing great. We decided to go on a trip we had rescheduled to Coos Bay because she has been cleared to drive again.

If you’re not familiar with the area, Coos Bay is just a few hours south of Newport heading down highway 101. Near Coos Bay are Sunset Bay, Cape Arago, and Shore Acres.

Shore Acres looking south
Shore acres looking north

These areas are best known for the massive wave action they get during heavy swells. It’s perhaps the best place on the coast to capture massive wave explosions.

A little closer to home is The Devil’s Churn. The churn is unique because it a cove nestled in the middle of a right angle on the coast, so the result is that different wave patterns and currents collide right in the middle. Although it wasn’t producing large waves when I visited, I did zoom in and catch some interesting shots.

Waves
Waves
Waves

Back to Coos Bay … it was a trip for us to relax, so I didn’t create a plan for astrophotography. When we saw the weather forecast, however, I knew I needed to bring my equipment. I was so proud of the staging, testing, and packing that I did. I had everything I needed …. Well, almost everything. I staged my tripods but forgot to load them. No sturdy tripod meant no heavy telescope, so planets were off the list.

Adapt!

I decided to work with the mount I have, a ZWO AM7, and see if I could fit it onto my wife’s Gizmo carbon tripod. Not only did it fit, but the tripod held it well. I was able to take long exposures, and I shot the camper and some crepuscular rays at sunset.

Golden Adventurer
Dusks Foreshadows

I used my 50mm lens to photograph the complex nebulae that reside in the Northern Cross asterism.

Large region of stars, dust, and nebulae — Northern Cross

The Northern Cross is a pattern of stars known as an "asterism" within the Cygnus constellation. It lies directly along the plane of the Milky Way, making it a rich region for astrophotography targets. It includes the top star, Deneb, a supergiant that is one of the brightest known stars, and the bottom star, Albireo, a color-contrast double star. The heart of the cross, Sadr, lies in a complex of hydrogen clouds and dark dust lanes that form several popular nebulae including the North America nebula and the Pelican nebula. I shot this with my 50mm lens from a dark site near Coos Bay.

The Milky Way

Then, I headed to the cape.

The original plan was to shoot a lighthouse from a distance and capture star trails because it would be due north. The distance was a bit farther than I anticipated, so in the wide field of view the lighthouse gets lost and in the zoomed view it takes too long for star trails. So, ixnay on that idea. Next, the Milky Way.

It was so dark that I could clearly see it with my unaided eye. I took a tentative shot where I was, but a prior planning session using the PhotoPills app told me where it would be.

I drove down from the lighthouse overlook to park at Sunset Bay.

It was near midnight when the Milky Way made it over to the place I wanted to shoot. To kill time, I shot several frames of the galactic core rising over the distant tree line.

Milky Way over the water — The main event

I also mounted the telescope with an astrophotography camera and shot several minutes of exposure of M45, the Pleiades.

A blue star cluster — M45 - the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters

It was very surreal standing there in the darkness because the waves were incredibly loud. Not only booms and crashes, but every few minutes there was an almost “tearing” sound that would start far away and slowly come closer and then zoom past. I’m not sure what it was from, but I assume just more heavy wave action.

The vantage point I grabbed was next to a Sitka spruce. I didn’t realize how perfectly it aligned with the Milky Way until after I took the shot. I manually shot six overlapping tiles with my Sony A7R IV and 14mm Sigma f/1.4 lens. Each panel was a 30-second exposure at ISO 640. I then blended the exposures to create the panorama.

As an added bonus, the Andromeda Galaxy was clearly visible hovering over the Milky Way’s Arch. I pulled data from “Nebulous Neighbor” (a close-up of the Andromeda galaxy) to enhance the details in this image.

The result is what I believe is technically my best Milky Way arch ever shot.