Photographing the milky way on Wembury Beach in south Devon, UK

Three nights on Wembury Beach chasing the Milky Way… One night crystal clear, one night a cloud‑soaked betrayal. The last night - perfect skies but busy!  Tracked shots, driftwood foregrounds, a meteor cameo, annoying headlights and phone screens — and plenty of tea brewed under the stars. New blog post.

Three Nights on Wembury Beach: Chasing the Milky Way Over South Devon

After the Durdle Door Debacle (which you can read about here - https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/my-second-milky-way-session-of-2026.html), I decided it was time for a confidence‑restoring mission. So, I headed back to familiar territory: Wembury Beach, South Devon, where the Milky Way would rise neatly over the Newton Ferrers headland just after midnight, like a cosmic lighthouse beam brightening the night sky.

Images from The Durdle Door Debacle

It is clear I just haven't got image collection and then post editing nailed down yet - a major work in progress! 

I gave myself three nights for Wembury Beach.
One turned out beautifully clear.
The second … well, let’s just say the clouds had other plans.

And the third? 

Headlights, phone screens, white head torches - so many rejected images! 

But that’s astrophotography for you — part science, part art, part cosmic roulette.

 

My Goals for all three Nights

I kept things simple and focused:

• Capture good-quality Milky Way data, both tracked and untracked
• Take midnight landscape shots with actual thought behind the composition (a personal growth area…)
• Attempt some form of Milky Way selfie
• In post-processing, balance sky and foreground exposure for a clean composite blend

Basically: redeem myself after Durdle Door and come home with something worth showing the internet.

 You can read here, how I plan a milky way imaging session: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first.html  and https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_19.html

Night One: Clear Skies and Cosmic Calm

The Milky Way would be at its best between 01:00 and 02:30, with high tide at 00:30 — a detail worth checking unless you enjoy wet feet and expensive equipment baptisms.

I rolled into the National Trust car park around 23:45, and by midnight I was on the beach, headtorch glowing and arcing about like a confused firefly. Thanks to a daytime recce, I already had two compositions in mind:

1. Sitting on a log with the Mill House and Milky Way behind
2. A wider shot of beach, driftwood, and Mill House under the rising core

Conditions were a dream:
Clear skies, 8°C, barely a whisper of wind. The sea behaved itself. No spray. No drama. Just the quiet hush of the tide and the occasional owl wondering what on earth I was doing.

Shooting Workflow across the night 

I worked through a structured sequence:

• Tracked portrait frames
• Untracked portrait frames
• Switch to landscape orientation
• Repeat: tracked → untracked
• GoPro night timelapse movie

Camera Settings

• Untracked: ISO 1600, 20 seconds × 15 frames, f/2.8
• Tracked: ISO 1600, 80 seconds × 20 frames, f/2.8 

Gear List (for the fellow kit nerds)

• Canon 800D (astromodded)
• Samyang 14mm f/2.8
• Aoelean wireless intervalometer
• Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i (WiFi)
• William Optics wedge
• Benbo Mach 3 carbon fibre tripod
• USB power bank
• Sky-Watcher right‑angled polar viewer
• MSM green laser with SWSA2i attachment
• Gorillapod 3kg ball head
• Petzl headtorch (with red mode, obviously)
• Dew band heater 
• Joby Gorillapod small tripod with phone holder attachment
• GoPro Hero 9 

Between sequences, I brewed tea on my Primus Lite Jetboil stove — its soft hiss and occasional roar felt oddly comforting. I prefer a stove to a flask; it reminds me of my mountaineering days and my more recent dinghy‑cruising adventures (which you can find on my YouTube channel: ).

There’s something grounding about making tea under the stars.  

 

I haven't quite got the brightness sorted - both images are a little dark.

Tonally, the blues and magentas are a little strong in the sky. 

Night Two: The Great Cloud Betrayal

Five weather apps promised clear skies.
Five.

Naturally, the moment I arrived, the sky filled with thin, high cirrus — the kind that looks innocent until you realise it’s basically a giant cosmic diffuser.

We had 80% cloud cover for the entire session. I stayed, of course. Hope springs eternal in the heart of an astrophotographer.

The only consolation?
One frame — just one — caught a meteor streaking through the murk. A tiny victory, but I’ll take it.

Some nights are like that. The sky gives you a polite “no” and you pack up, slightly cold, slightly grumpy, but still weirdly satisfied.

Equipment and capture details remained similar to Night one. But, when I got home - all the imagesd were ditched. Every single one had excessive clouds in. 

Night three: far too much going on 😕

Too many astrophotographers in close proxsimity - and then cars in and out of the car park on the cliff top; people with phone screens and white head torches! So much movement across my frames at times - and, frustratingly, it was the best sky across the three nights 😭. The milky way positively glowed - like scattered diamonds across a black velvet cloth backdrop  - you get my drift! 

I did have a shooting plan for this night - rather than my normal 'random' approach

• do a star trail above the mill house
• take a series of landscape shots from 2 different parts of the beach area (the tide was out fully) - the aim to take at least three shots of each location scene so I could stack each set of three in affinity photo to get a really sharp landscape foreground. 
• take a series of tracked shots and then untracked shots from each of the locations above
• try out my google pixel 6a on astrophotography mode

I did manage to get all the data but a quick glance confirms my suspicions - lots of random lighting and ghostly shadows..... did I say it was sooooooo frustrating? 

 

Processing the Milky Way Images

Back home, everything will go into Affinity Photo’s AstroStack.
After stacking, I will move through:

• Develop Persona for initial corrections
• Photo Persona for the heavier lifting

If you’re curious about how I edit my Milky Way images, I’ve written about my workflow here:

https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/12/editing-tutorial-guide-to-how-i-post.html

 https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/some-sessions-give-you-diamonds-others.html

I am in the process of updating my work flow and when I have finished it - I will post a summary here as an update - giver me a couple of weeks. 

Final Thoughts

Three nights on Wembury Beach reminded me why I keep coming back to this coastline. Even when the clouds misbehave, even when the apps lie, even when the universe throws curveballs — there’s still magic in the process.

Clear skies aren’t guaranteed.      Good data isn’t guaranteed.   You can't predict random interventions! 

But the experience? Always worth it.

And when the Milky Way finally arcs over the headland, bright and delicate like spilled sugar across black velvet (I like this analogy better) — well, that’s the moment that keeps you, and me, coming back.