I went stargazing last night at Sandstone Peak in Malibu with my friend Huzaifa – here are some of the post-processed long-exposure shots he took:
Huzaifa has two scopes, and a local named Bob showed up with his own rig. All together, we viewed Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons and bands, and Mars, not to mention a few Messier globular clusters, an open cluster in Hercules, and Berenice’s Comb.
Here’s the location – the ocean was due south, and offered the darkest skies, though we left around midnight, well before the bulk of the Milky Way rose. The western sky was a slightly contaminated by glow from Oxnard. Due east was pretty poor due to light from Thousand Oaks and the Valley beyond. The bulk of Los Angeles proper was southeast and too far away to really interfere, however. For a site only 30 min from home, this was an absolutely superb location, especially for the southeastern sky. See: