Sky at Night

Evening/Morning April 17/18th 2011. Star trail captured using the dramatic tone filter on Olympus E5 with 12-60mm SWD. Not sure what the trail is running through Polaris. Tracked all the satellites from exactly when it went through (2216hrs) and come up with nothing. Concluded it must have been an aircraft. Just trialling the art filter with the stacking process really here. Not bad but do prefer the natural.

April 12 2011. 50 years ago this very day Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. This is my own fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary. Over 1300 images captured all night to produce this wonderful star trail. Happy Anniversary Yuri :-) Note the 2 meteor trails (at 2 & 7 o'clock), a nice bonus. The red/orange tinge is the result of clouds rolling in. Captured with Olympus E5 and 12-60mm SWD, dew shield (to keep the moisture away) and stacked with startrails software.

Early hours of April 9th 2011. The International Space Station (ISS) passes over UK skies, not once but twice, in a double flyby. The first flyby at 0308hrs & second just over an hour later at 0439hrs. There was actually a third flyby at 0613hrs but daylight prevented the camera from capturing. Both flybys were captured separately and flattened with software to produce the final composite image. What you are viewing here is the sun's reflection as the ISS passes over. The shorter flyby 1 is down to the ISS being hidden in most part by the Earth's shadow and therefore invisible.