Sky at Night

Graveyard Star Trail

Nov 27/28 2011. As featured in The Telegraph and the Daily Mail Nov 29th :-) This amazing startrail has captured the ISS, celestial north pole, celestial equator and Jupiter in one shot. 2700 exposures and over 11 hours to execute this shot. A rare clear sky evening during an unsettled and mild start to the British winter. I had this location planned for a while and was just waiting for the right conditions - No cloud, no moon and clear skies. Misterton church with its scary graveyard and this tree make a great foreground composition subject. This is paramount for good startrail shots IMHO. I set up the Olympus E5 with 7-14mm wide angle lens on tripod at F4, ISO 640 and 15s exposure time. Attaching the RM-CB1 cable I locked the cable to take continuous shots all night. Camera was in place approx 1845hrs and I picked it up the following morning at approx 0630hrs. Back at home I imported the 2700 images into StarStax software to provide the final stacked composite. If you look closely between the church spire and tree you will see the International Space Station (ISS) intersecting the startrail arcs. This was the 0555hrs flyby, The stars are spinning around the celestial north star (polaris) top right and just above the church (bottom left) the stars start to reverse direction. This is the celestial equator. Also, the brightest trail line (running through the church spire) is jupiter. Quite an amazing and pleasing shot, if I say so myself :-)