On Thursday night when the sky was clear, the Milky Way looked lovely setting over the mountain in the West. So on Friday night, 16th October at IISAC2009, I setup my Canon 20D and 24-105mm L lens on a tripod, and programmed it to take 30 seconds exposures on repeat.
I combined the result into a timelapse movie. There’s also a single star trails image with all of the frames combined.
On top of one of the hills facing South East at Lostock Scout Camp, there’s a row of 5 trees that really stand out. I always wanted to make them more of a focus of something photographic. I used them in my Raining Stars at Lostock image from IISAC2008, but it was a much wider field.
On Friday night, 16th October at IISAC2009, I wanted to try again with a longer focal length. I setup my Canon 20D and 24-105mm L lens on a tripod, and programmed it to take 30 seconds exposures on repeat.
I combined the result into a movie – showing both timelapse and star trails. There’s also a single star trails image with all of the frames combined.
Finally, I got the chance to do some social observing and some astrophotography away from home when I went to the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club on Saturday night.
It was my first session of astrophotography away from home since January, when I captured the Rosette Nebula at the Pony Club! Yes, it had been that long!
I captured some piggyback widefield images of the Milky Way, which are yet to be processed – but while packing up I also set the camera up to do some quick star trail shots, and the final stacked image is below.
Star Trails while packing up at the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club
The image above is a stack of 8 frames, captured with my Canon 20D on a fixed tripod, ISo400, 2.5 minute exposures. The fuzzy patch is the star clouds of the Milky Way.
I created an animated gif of all 8 single frames, which you can see below (click on the image to download the 700kb gif).
When you’re on a family holiday over christmas, it’s 10pm at night and the skies are clear and you feel the need to do some photography, what better option than to head into the sand dunes at Birubi Beach and take some star trail photos.
So there I was, sitting in the sand dunes while the camera clicked away with 1-minute exposures, feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere but still connected as I browsed my favourite websites on my laptop with the NextG wireless modem until my laptop battery went flat.
I was able to grab about 60 x 1-minute exposures until the camera battery went flat, and resulting star trails photo is below.
Continue reading to see a video showing the beautiful parts of our southern sky rising over the Birubi Beach Sand Dunes (as well as the cars, and the cargo ship!). You’ll also find more information including capture and processing details and why I took so long to post this image live.
These images have been a long time coming – they were taken back in late June/early July, at Nambucca Heads on the mid-north coast of NSW when Anthony Wesley and I were there for a planetary imaging camp.
I only just got around to processing them this week. I’m not sure why but I always left them until later. Looking at them now, I wish I’d processed them earlier – i’m really happy with how they’ve turned out. I love these type of shots – combining terrestrial photography with astronomical interests.
We had such a fantastic week there – every day was clear and every night was clear. Every morning had brilliant (cloudless) sunrises and the waning thin crescent moon made an absolutely georgeous sight each morning. Read on to see more images..
In the 2 hours of clear skies on Thursday night at IISAC2008 while my main scope and camera was capturing the Horsehead and Flame Nebula, I setup my 350D with the Sigma 17-70mm lens on a tripod to capture some star trails.
I used the Aputure Timer Remote to program exposures of 5 minutes with a 3-sec delay in-between. The battery was running flat and I could see the clouds coming. When I went over to stop the exposures and take some dark frames, I found that the lens was completely fogged over. Unfortunately both of my dew heater straps were occupied on the imaging telescope and guide scope, and I neglected to think about the camera lens, otherwise I would’ve used the hairdryer to clear it up.
So 7 of the 9 exposures were pretty much wasted, though it gave an interesting effect when I stacked all the images together using startrails.de. It gave the star trails an interesting look, so I kept them and gave the title Raining Stars at IISAC2008.
Here’s the image. Click the image in the gallery to see the 1200px wide version.
The only processing is stacking followed by minor levels adjustment and noise reduction in Photoshop CS2.
The last of the clear skies presented itself right before dawn on Sunday morning, the last morning of the star party. It had been cloudy and raining on and off all Saturday during the day and night, so when I went to bed, the last thing I expected was for it to clear. But luckily I was woken at about 4:30am by Vincent scrummaging around with his scope which was setup near my tent. I thought he was packing up to go home early and was just about to pull the extra blanket over me and roll over to go back to sleep, when I heard Ian Maclean walking by talking to Vincent about the clear skies. I stuck my head out of the tent to find beautiful, clear dark skies so I jumped out of bed, put the freezer suit on and headed to my trailer.
I’d already packed the scope away, so I just got out the tripod and Canon 350D to take some star trails as the morning light approached – way too quickly! It was becoming light after only 15 minutes and by 5am I had to stop the exposures as the sky was practically bright blue now. My battery ran flat after the first exposure so there’s a gap between the first and the next exposures while I changed the battery. I should’ve recharged it after Thursday night!
Enough rambling, here’s the image – Dawn Star Trails at IISAC2008. Click the image in the gallery for the 1200px wide version.
My family and I went for a trip up to Lostock on Saturday, 27th September 2008, for some site reconnaissance a month out from IISAC2008.
The sky was lovely and dark as I remembered, however there was a strong stiff wind blowing and the seeing was terrible, but it didn’t stop me doing some widefield/piggyback shots.
Here’s one of the images from the night – a startrail shot looking south over the bottom farmhouse. My widefield imaging setup is in the foreground and the camera is on a tripod about 2 metres back.
I’m happy with how it turned out but it’s not exactly as I’d hoped in my minds eye. Need a wider angle lens to be able to fit more foreground interest while still getting enough sky. The SMC and LMC were very prominent in the individual frames but of course have been smeared beyond recognition in this combined image
The image is a combination of 46x 6 min exposures (4.6 hours) at ISO200, with a Canon 350D and Sigma 17-70mm lens @ 17mm. Dark subtracted and processed using startrails.de followed by Photoshop.
My name is Mike Salway and I'm an amateur astronomer and photographer. I'm the co-founder of IceInSpace, and this is my personal blog site and image gallery. Read more about me.
My name is Mike Salway and I'm an amateur astronomer and photographer. I'm the co-founder of 
