Milky Way Rises over Cathedral Rock in Sedona

With a very clear night and the moon rise not expected for several hours, I set up the iOptron SkyTracker to capture images of the Milky Way and Cathedral Rock in Sedona. The star image was 4 minutes in length and shot at ISO 1600. The SkyTracker works well enough that the stars still appear as points with this long-exposure image. A second image was then taken using the same exposure settings but with the tracker turned off in order to get a sharp foreground.

The Milky Way rises above Cathedral Rock in Sedona.
The Milky Way rises above Cathedral Rock in Sedona.

Taking the images was easy. So was the post processing. It turned out that combining and blending the two images was harder than I thought. But the result was worth it.