Sky at Night

Dec 01/02 2012. Clear skies at last for the first serious frost of winter. Temps got down -4C here in the East Midlands. Returning to a favourite local landmark, Misterton church nr Lutterworth, Leics. A great foreground composition subject for this star trail. I set up the Olympus E5 with 7-14mm wide angle lens on tripod at F4, ISO 500 and 15s exposure time. Attaching the RM-CB1 cable I locked the cable to take continuous shots all night. Camera was in place approx 1800hrs and I picked it up the following morning at approx 0630hrs. 12 hours of continuous shooting, only made possible by using the DIY dew shield which prevented the camera lens from freezing over. I imported the 2000+ images into StarStax software to provide the final stacked composite. The stars are spinning around the celestial north star (polaris) top right and on the left the stars start to reverse direction. This is the celestial equator. 91% waning moon too!

Nov 28 2012. Full moon & Jupiter composite. Moon f6.3, 1/1000s ISO 200 & Jupiter f5.6, 1/80s ISO 1000 A very nice sight :-) Captured with #Olympus E5 & 90-250mm and although I could see the 4 moons of Jupiter through camera I could not capture, very difficult so close to moon with so much ambient reflected light.

Lunar montage 2012. I started this shoot with phases of the moon in April 2012. It has taken 6 months awaiting the right weather conditions to achieve. It culminates with the August end blue moon, so called because it was the second full moon in one calendar month - a rare event and hence the name. Blue moons occur every 2-3 yrs. All lunar phases were captured with the Olympus E5 & 90-250mm lens with the addition of a x2 TC. This yields a max focal length of 500mm (35mm equivalent of 1000mm due to the four thirds sensor x2).