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Had an extra day off back-to-back with a scheduled day off, since I discharged all my patients. Joanne and I ended up driving up to twin peaks with Sueann and Joey, who have several telescopes, on the theory that we might be able to sneak some astronomy in, while trying to find a relatively quiet spot among all the noisy stoners in the parking lot.
I had a theory that one could take a star trail image with San Francisco as the foreground, with the hope that some of the brighter stars would shine through the light pollution. I guess that was true, although because only the very brightest stars are visible, this results in some heterogeneity in where the trails are located in the sky. The fact that the sky around Polaris happens to have dimmer stars on average probably didn't help either.
An unexpected benefit was that the field included part of the takeoff path from Oakland airport. This produced the cuved aircraft paths in the lower right part of the sky.
I'm not quite pleased with this image. Not sure what's missing. Perhaps a better view of the city, where the city is larger relative to the sky? But then the light pollution would be worse, and the image would lose its meaning. Maybe it just needed a longer integration time (this one was just over an hour), so that the star paths would be longer.
