This is a report of short weekend trip to Assateague State Park located on the island in the state of Maryland, USA. It is right on the beach of North Atlantic Ocean

It is a Bortle 4 to Bortle 3 level dark sky location.

Island have many wild horses running around campsites and trails, they are everywhere :)

Camp was pretty busy and getting a spot on a short notice was quite a challenge.

People camp with all various camp levels and vehicles :)

I’ve arrived around 6:30pm and sun was already very low at sunset.

Temperature was nearly perfect +17 °C and I was ready to have some campfire dinner before starting a starscape photoshoot.

First test even without star tracker revealed nice Milkyway belt, also visible with naked eye.

Little bit of processing to get the night sky popup some more. This was done without the tracker to get some dynamics with stars trailing. This is a stack of 5 images.

Wide-angle with MW galaxy belt:

Now some close-up deep sky photos.

Andromeda Galaxy is visible with M33 Galaxy not “far away”.

This photo was taken with Nikkor AF-S 14-24/2.8 at 15mm setting and 30 seconds exposure.

100% cropped image:

Now let’s swap lens to Nikkor AF-S 70-200/2.8 VRII and try some 200mm photo of Orion belt.

I was again quite impressed with capture of Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula near the Alnitak star system in Orion Belt.

Image was taken with 150 seconds exposure with f/5.0 and ISO 3200.

Wider view is also captured with 70mm setting at 30 second exposure and f/4.0 at ISO 4000.

With high humidity and dropping temperatures at night fogging and condensation is a problem when talking longer photo sequences. But sometimes it can produce cool effects, such as this: