It has been a few months since I have tried my hand at another star trail shot, so as Monday night turned to Tuesday morning I decided to head back out and do just that. The temperature was now -8°C and a white, crisp frost had settled on everything, but the sky was so clear it begged believe. The first task was to set the camera up and focus on infinity, which I do by using a distant street light as a reference point. I wanted to capture the sweeping circular motion of the stars, so I aimed the camera on the tail of Ursa Major, made some final setting checks and framed the shot. As a last precaution I ran some test shots just to make sure that I was focused on infinity. With everything checking out okay I began snapping off exposures.
The resulting image that you can see above is a combination of 43×30 second exposures taken at 18mm using an f/stop of 4.5 with an ISO of 400. I had planned on taking 60 exposures in an effort to lengthen the trails, but unfortunately some altocumulus clouds decided to drift into my field of view from the north west as I was nearing exposure number 50. This meant that some of the shots were “spoiled” and had to be dropped at the processing stage.
As star trail images go it’s not great, but it’s not too bad either. What I really need to do is figure out how I can set the camera to take continuous 30 second exposures without having to manually hit the remote switch. This would mean I could get more exposures as well as spend some of the time observing while the camera does it’s thing. Finding a simple solution to this problem would definitely take the stress out of my star trail sessions but until then I’ll have to continue with my method of manually exposing shots.
Tags: DSLR, Star Trails, Ursa Major
Posted in Astrophotography | 3 Comments »
The forecast at the Met Office held out - early Monday morning delivered crisp, clear skies with the odd cloud drifting overhead. I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this so promptly geared up to capture another and possibly better star trail image.
The target for the session was the constellation of Orion as it rose over the roof tops towards the south east. Having positioned the tripod and the camera I decided to take a few test shots to make sure that I was focused on infinity as well as frame the image as best I could considering the urban landscape (the backyard).
The final image is a result of thirty six 30 second exposures taken at 24mm using an ISO of 800 with an F/Stop of 4.5. I had originally taken forty six exposures but towards the end of shooting clouds began rolling in and spoiled the view. The exposures were put together in Startrails and post processed in Photoshop.
Orion can be seen rising at the very centre of the picture - I even managed to capture part of The Hyades in there too which can be seen at the top of the shot, again near the centre. All in all I’m pretty happy with my second star trails attempt, but would love to do longer trails, which means either taking more exposures or experimenting with longer exposures, F/Stops and ISO speeds. Certainly food for thought.
After capturing all the exposures that would make up my final star trails image, I decided to go for a wander across the sky using the Bresser 10×50 binoculars. I chanced my luck and decided to see if I could catch a glimpse of NGC 7000: The North America Nebula in Cygnus. No such luck - I’m beginning to think that the skies around Falkirk and Stenhousemuir just aren’t dark enough.
Having no joy with Cygnus I moved on to a current favorite of mine: Auriga and the delights of M36, M37 and M38. I viewed these three open clusters through the Strathspey 25×100 binoculars a few weeks back and I wasn’t disappointed. The view through the 10×50s was no less thrilling if not more stunning. Beautiful deep sky objects and ones I’m certainly going to be observing a lot more in the future. From here I swept over to The Hyades and The Pleiades in Taurus for a quick glimpse but I just couldn’t stop myself from coming back to these two amazing open clusters again and again during the course of my morning observations.
Reluctantly I soon turned my attention to the majesty of M31: The Andromeda Galaxy. No matter how many times I see it, it is always a wondrous sight to behold, but I almost broke my neck viewing it as the constellation itself was positioned almost at the zenith. Moving down towards the constellation Triangulum I eventually found M33, making it only the second time I have seen this fantastic yet elusive galaxy. I spent quite a while in this part of the sky, sweeping backwards and forwards from M31 and M33 just drinking in the mesmerizing view.
Before long I finally surrendered and focused the binoculars on the splendor of M42: The Orion Nebula. Yes I’ve seen The Orion Nebula many,many times before, but it still never fails to make an epic impact on me. Wheeling around to Ursa Major I thought I try and hunt down M81 and M82 but eventually just began browsing around the sky aimlessly. At this point I gradually wound things up and decided to head for the warmth of the house. Unfortunately I never managed to see or capture any Orionids or Taurids, but there is always next time.
Tags: Andromeda, Auriga, Collinder 50, Cygnus, DSLR, M31, M33, M36, M37, M38, M42, M45, M81, M82, NGC 7000, Orion, Orionids, Star Trails, Taurids, Taurus, The Hyades, The Orion Nebula, The Pleiades, Triangulum, Ursa Major, Weather
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The weather in Britain is unpredictable at the best of times, but this as they say really takes the biscuit. It all went down hill more or less from Tuesday with things becoming progressively worse as the week wore on. By Saturday it all seemed to peak when driving winds and a continuous down pour of heavy rain just refused to dissipate.
With the wind having finally blown itself out and shorter periods of rain fall, today is markedly better - there’s even a hint of blue sky cutting through the clouds! Going by the Met Office’s forecasts there should be a couple of hours or so of clear skies at around 03:00 am on Monday morning. I’ve been dying to get out and shoot some more star trails in the south east with the slim hope of catching a stray Taurid or Orionid. If the prediction from the Met Office holds out I may get my chance, although the way the weather has been recently, I’m not holding my breath.
Tags: Orionid, Star Trails, Taurid, Weather
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I really love star trails, they have an ancient and magical quality to them, but the real magic lies in capturing them successfully. Light pollution is just one of the bug bears of long exposure astrophotography and I found this out the hard way. Since getting my hands on a DSLR I have wanted to try and have a go at taking star trail images, but as with any new piece of kit it takes time to get a handle on using it.
Having shot some decent constellation photographs I felt it was time to give star trail photography a go. Monday night dished up a reasonably clear sky - transparency was so so with some cloud cover passing over but I decided to persevere with an experimental first attempt. Setting up the camera and the tripod to face northwards towards Ursa Major, I decided to shoot 4 seven and half minute exposures at 18mm with an F/Stop of 5.6 and an ISO of 800. To cut a long story short, it was a disaster! Each of the four exposures were completely blown out and fogged up with the orange / yellow haze of light pollution.
The only real success of the evening was catching a fiery Orionid Taurid gliding like a string of syrup overhead as it traveled south eastwards. A bright fireball with a visible contrail and a red hue, it had an entrance and disappearance arc somewhere between 40° and 50° and lasted about 3 - 4 seconds. My only regret was that I did’nt catch it on ‘film’.
I spent the rest of the evening looking at my four blown exposures and reflecting on what I could do to improve results. I decided a more austere approach was needed and this meant taking shorter exposures over the same period of time.
I was back out on Tuesday night (21.10.08) to put my star trail experiment into motion. Again I set up the camera and the tripod facing northwards and set the camera up using a focal length of 18mm at ISO 800, but this time I opened the aperture right up to 3.5 and set exposures to 30 seconds. As you can see from the result below, it’s not bad for a first attempt. The sky transparency wasn’t great and this image was shot on a second attempt as I had to abort mission first time around due to rainfall.
The image is made up of twenty five 30 second exposures that were combined in a fantastic little utility program called Startrails. The resulting TIFF that was rendered was then post processed in Photoshop to produce the image above.
I’ll definitely be trying more of these kind of shots. While it is a bit of chore doing all of the exposures one after the other, it is really rewarding to put them altogether in Startrails to see the end result. Hopefully if the skies remain clear(ish) I can try and catch another Orionid or two as well!
Tags: DSLR, Orionid, Star Trails, Taurid, Ursa Major
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