Night Skies 3

 

Normally when I go out with my camera for  3 or 4 hours I will come back with hundreds of shots and several that I will want to share via this blog. However, when I went out to photograph the night sky I was left with effectively just two views one to the south with the headland illuminated by the beam from the lighthouse and a second facing west taking in the lighthouse itself and the skies above. Not a lot for the time and effort you might think, but actually I learned a lot from this trip and I am very pleased with the images I got. If you look at the posts over the last two days you will see some of the better images and today I have posted my favourite images from the night.

Firstly you have the view to the south, this was a 90 second tracked exposure (ISO 1600, 17mm F/4.0). The bright orange star slightly above the horizon and slightly to the left is Antares, the 15th brightest star in our night sky and the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpio. If you can zoom in you will see the other stars in Scorpio fanning outwards. Above that you have the constellation of Libra, and then above that slightly to the right is the bright white star Arcturus the brightest star in Bootes. 

I know it is hard to make things out and so I am aided by a neat app called Stellarium and another called Star Walk 2 which help to nicely map the sky and get my bearings on what is where. Stellarium is great because I can go back to the sky map for the exact date and time I was there and it takes out the guesswork.

In the second image, which I love, we have the lighthouse casting its beam into the Irish Sea. We are looking west and in the sky above the lighthouse we can see the constellation of Leo, the two bright stars in the centre sitting almost horizontally to each other mark the top of the constellation they are Denebola and Zosma and then towards the top of the frame almost directly above is a lovely cluster of stars, which are part of Coma Berenices, they just have numbers instead of names (eg 12 Comae Berenices).

I don't know about you but I am fascinated by the night sky, just being there in the early hours, despite the biting cold, it was a real treat to be able to look up at the vastness of space and to be able to see so many celestial bodies and to marvel at the beauty that we so rarely get to see.