Sky at Night

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.

Startrail with a couple of Leonids captured on the evening/morning of 16th/17th November 2009. Height of the Leonid meteor shower and disappointed only to capture a couple. Set up Olympus E3 with 7-14mm lens on tripod, 15s exposure, F4.0 and captured continuous from 2100hrs on 16th through till 0700hrs on 17th. 9 hrs of earths motion, 2000 images put together in startrails software. Nice to capture the opposite curvature of the trails above and below the celestial equator.