Sky at Night

Star Trail captured on evening/morning Dec 8/9th. Looking due south and a very nice example detailing the opposing curvature of the trails above and below the celestial equator. Caught a meteor too (top right). Captured with Olympus E5 & 7-14mm. Temps dropped to -4C overnight and skies were exceptionally clear. Home made dew shield kept the ice/moisture at bay. Camera was put outside at approx 7pm and left out all night for 12 hrs of continuous shooting. 15s exposure @ F4 via remote cable locked for cont shooting. 3000 images imported and stacked to produce final exposure.

My third star trail shot with the Olympus E5. 26 Nov 2010. The only good thing about the unprecedented cold snap currently gripping the UK is the clear sky opportunities :-) For this shot I used the 7-14mm lens and mounted the E5 on a tripod outside my house and composed around Polaris (around which the trail spins) and the table for which I added a bit of self portrait trickery :-) To do this I sat at each position for 30s and move to the next position. A torch was placed on the table for each pose. IS0 set to 400 opened the aperture as wide as it went (F4) and shot 15s exposures continuously all night from approx 7pm to 7am the next morning. Noise reduction was switched OFF. Camera was powered via external using extension lead from garage. To prevent the camera and lens from dewing and freezing over my home made dew shield was used. However, this did not prevent the snow from falling and covering the camera! As you can see from the clouds in the trail snow rolled in early hours and the snow spots on the lens can just be seen bottom right of frame. Oh well! The following morning I retrieved the camera where temps dropped to -5C. The shutter release button was frozen solid with snow/ice. After downloading the 2500 images and running through stacking software the final composite, that you see, was produced. The image was imported into Aperture with a tiny levels adjustment and removal of some annoying plane light trails. NO noise reduction filter was applied and reduced from the original JPEG size to this one you see with No sharpening.

My second star trail shot with the Olympus E5. 25 Nov 2010. The only good thing about the unprecedented cold snap currently gripping the UK is the clear sky opportunities :-) For this shot I used the 12-60mm SWD lens and mounted the E5 on a tripod underneath a clump of trees at the bottom of my field and composed around Polaris (around which the trail spins). IS0 set to 400 opened the aperture as wide as it went (F2.8) and shot 15s exposures continuously all night from approx 7pm to 7am the next morning. Noise reduction was switched OFF. Camera was powered via external using extension lead from garage. To prevent the camera and lens from dewing and freezing over my home made dew shield was used. The following morning I retrieved the camera from a frozen field where temps dropped to -5C. After downloading the 2500 images and running through stacking software the final composite, that you see, was produced. The image was imported into Aperture with a tiny levels adjustment and removal of some annoying plane light trails. NO noise reduction filter was applied and reduced from the original JPEG size to this one you see with No sharpening.