Trails, Beehives And Martians

The top image is a stacked group of 45 30-second exposures at f/5, 320 ISO and 18mm focal length. Total duration for the images was from 9:42-10:15 PM CDT, Friday, May 9, 2014. The image looks west over Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The five bright streaks above the treeline are, from left: star Procyon, planet Jupiter, star Pollux, star Castor and star Capella. A streak from aircraft lights extends lightly from the middle to the upper right of the image. The middle photo is one of the 45 stacked images, this one shot at 9:42 PM. Lightly visible at upper center left is the ghostly looking Beehive Cluster. The bottom image, looking south, shows the planet Mars (center) bathed in the light of the half-moon at 10:17 PM from the same location as the top two images.