2. Night Sky

Sky at Night

Look into the night sky and you look back in time. The sky at night is a vastness beyond comprehension, full of celestial objects like galaxies, stars, planets and the Moon. Gaze into a clear night sky and you get drawn into another world, a world as it was in the past. In this collection I am sharing my favourite night sky images and collections. All have been photographed in a natural environment and are real images. Many of my images tell a story, whether the subject matter or process of composition.
All photos captured with OM System.
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    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.
    Nov 22/23 2011 startrail. Seems an age since we last had clear skies....in fact it was! Took the opportunity to grab another startrail in spot ventured before. Come out quite nice. Put camera in the field approx 1930 hrs and left it shooting continuous all night (15s exposures). Picked it up at 0730 the following morning. Captured with Olympus E5 & 8mm fisheye. 15s exposure time, F3.5 and ISO 640. Foreground and trees lit with flash bursts.