Star Trails Over Porlock Marsh

The trees in Porlock Marsh were killed by sea water when the beach breached in 1996 and stand in what is now a salt marsh. I photographed these star trails over one of the dead trees while waiting for spring high tide to cover the marsh at sunrise.

Using a 14mm wide angle lens, I composed so the tree’s upper branches framed the North Star and would echo the curves made by the stars as Earth rotates. I made 107 30-second exposures at f/2 and ISO 1600 between 5am and 6am, before cloud covered the sky and astronomical twilight arrived. I illuminated the tree with a hand torch on the first two frames to show its texture and detail. The images were stacked to show 54 minutes of star trails using StarStax after digitally removing a large number of aircraft trails.