This is the Spelonk lighthouse and ruined keeper's quarters on the east side of Bonaire. The ocean is maybe 30m beyond the lighthouse.
Earlier attempts at this image where thwarted by either being on the island at the wrong time of the year, or too many clouds, or my inability to navigate the unmarked dirt "roads" to get to the location.
The 30m tall lighthouse was built in 1910. It is currently in use with a flash every 5 seconds. "Spelonk" means "cave" in Dutch. I don't think there is a cave in the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse, but about 1 km away there is a dive site called Boca Spelonk, which has a cool underwater cave.
The light pollution on the right side is from Kralendijk, the main town on the island. It is an otherwise very dark location.
The large light in the upper right is Jupiter, and Saturn can be seen under the Milky Way and just right of center. In the upper right there are also two meteor streaks, I believe from the Delta Aquariids.
To get the shot, I setup a light behind the keeper's quarters to illuminate the lighthouse. I used light painting on the front of the ruins. This is a panorama stitch of 10 vertical images, taken at 15 degree intervals with a Rokinon 24mm F/1.4. Each exposure was taken at f/1.4 for 15 seconds. This lens has serious vignetting at f/1.4, which caused problematic vertical banding when the images were stitched. To help fix this, I corrected the vignetting in each image before stitching them together. The rest of the post processing is standard (I think) for a Milky Way pano.
The final image is 13K x 5K pixels. Download it if you would like to see the details, but to state the obvious, do not use without permission.
Thanks in advance for you comments and feedback!
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