Sky at Night

Gorgeous all night startrail from Dec 20th 2009. This version includes all of the pesky plane trails. The sky above the Leics skies is littered with them! I set up the camera pointed towards Polaris at 1700hrs on 20th and exposed every 15s until 0600hrs the following morning of 21st. Over 2500 exposures were then stacked in software to produce this stunning effect, showing earths rotation. The pale pink colour is the effect of clouds rolling through the exposure. Looks like I have also caught a meteorite (top right). Captured with Olympus E3, 12-60SWD lens on 800 ISO.

Neat star trail from Dec 18 2009, Leics, UK. Extremely cold (-6C) yet clear skies, ideal for startrail work. I focused on polaris and increased the focal length to work the close up effect. Taken with Olympus E3, 12-62mm SWD. Camera left out from 2100hrs on Dec 17th through 0700hrs Dec 19th capturing exposure every 15s for the entire period. Photo composite put together with startrails.de software. Annoying plane trails bottom right. Tripod and camera were frozen solid the following morning. Camera still firing away mind! Can't beat Olympus gear for extreme work :)

ISS & Space Shuttle Atlantis racing across the UK skies at 1657hrs on Nov 20 2009. It was the brightest body in the twilight skies at a magnitude of -3.3. Atlantis has been docked since Nov 18th 2009 and makes a great night time subject to capture. Taken with Olympus E3, 7-14mm lens of F4.0 for a total period of 2 mins 45s (11x15s continuous exposures). I lit up with tree with a strong torch for the duration of a couple of 15s exposures. The International Space Station is the biggest, brightest object orbiting Earth. The station's solar arrays span 240-feet from tip to tip, almost as wide as a football field. The ISS outshines Venus; only the sun and Moon are brighter.