Natural Wonder

 Over two nights in May I was able to fulfil a dream of observing the night sky properly. In the UK there are very few true dark sky areas and my previous attempts to observe the sky at night have been hampered by clouds, light pollution and poor timing. 

So on a recent holiday in the United States I was able to time a camping trip in the desert near Page AZ at the time of a new moon and with clear conditions.

On the first evening I concentrated on a start trail because there was a little cloud in the southern sky. I wanted to include the covered wagons as part of the foreground so I have managed to locate Polaris in the top left of the shot so the stars sweep upwards from the desert floor. Additional lighting was provided by people returning to the campsite and lighting everything up with their headlights. This image is a stack of around 270 images.

On the second night I had hope for clear skies so that I could point my camera south to get the milky way arching across the desert. However as the evening wore on heavy clouds gathered and I went to bed a little dejected feeling that an opportunity had been missed. However at 2am I woke up to answer a call of nature. As I stepped outside the tent I experienced such a sense of awe and wonder as I saw the sky as I had never seen it before. There were no clouds and there above and in front of me was the biggest expanse of star filled sky I forgot that I had needed the loo and set up my camera to capture a few shots. 

Whenever I look at my photos I think I could have done better, or I wish I could have framed it differently... however I am so happy that I got to see this and these images will serve as a reminder of that wonderful experience and the feeling of wonder. I hope that one day I will be able to capture something similar but if I don't I can still say that on this trip one of my ambitions was achieved.

Hilbre Island at Night

 After just over two hours taking star trail images I decided to finish off the evening (it was actually well after midnight) with a few single shot images. The first was a 30/1s exposure with ISO 800, the others are all 15/1s exposures with ISO 1000

I have then adjusted the settings in lightroom to create the final images. In each case I have had to meticulously remove some annoying noise artefacts caused due to the sensor heating up during long exposures but the effort was worth it. The tide had come in while I was shooting and so in these images the surface of the sea has a nice milky smooth appearance as it reflects the light from North Wales and the wind farm on the horizon and Hilbre Island which sits at the mouth of the River Dee. The light from the Hilbre Lighthouse can also be seen reflected.

As these are single shots there is less colour and definition in the stars, and star clusters than I would get if I I had used my star tracker and stacked multiple images but I was not set up for that. I really like the effect that the long exposure has produced. It has given me some ideas of what I can try next time I get out after dark.

One Night in Alsace

 I have not long returned from a week's holiday in Alsace, a truly beautiful region of France. We stayed in a fabulous cottage on a hillside 700m above a village called Fraize. On the second night of the stay there was a beautifully clear sky and although the moon was in its third quarter and very bright it was still possible to look up and see more stars than I would ever see in the sky above my home in the North West of England. So of course I couldn't resist getting out there to capture some pictures of the stars.

For the first image I have stacked 22 separate 20 sec shots to try to capture part of the spiral of the milky way. It is far from perfect I know; I did not use enough dark frame shots to reduce noise in the image hence the annoying horizontal line, and of course despite using the tree to the right of the image to mask the moon it was so bright and some of the colours are washed out. Even so the number of stars visible in this shot is incredible.

For the second image I have gone for my second ever attempt at a star trail and I am really pleased with this one...

I took a few test shots to try to get the image framed right. The illumination of the house is entirely from the moon across the valley. The cottage had a security light over the front door and to avoid setting that off I had to climb in and out of the dining room window which was fun especially when I startled a local cat that was hunting in the hedges close by.

This image is a composite of 204 shots each of 30 seconds so taken over a 2 hour period. There was a 3 sec cooling down period between each exposure and I have had to eliminate some shots because of a plane flying through which left an annoying yellow streak through my first attempt at processing this. Actually this was the third attempt because for the first one I was aligning the stars rather than setting up for a star trail so it was very disjointed and I thought I had messed it up. However taking the time to review it meant I finally got it right even though i had been ready to abandon the project altogether. I am so glad I stuck with it and hopefully you will agree that it was worth it.

Star Light

 This is another first for me, but something I will definitely try again, especially now the nights are darker for longer. I just have to hope for more clear skies.

This is a circular star trail (the second image is cropped to remove some of the distracting foreground) taken in the Forest of Bowland last night.

It is a stacked image using 135 individual  30 second exposures so in all this is a 70 minute exposure  which I shot over a 2 hour 20 minute time period.

Next time I will use a shorter period between shots and use a higher number of images to hopefully create even smoother more complete trails.

In the cropped image I have adjusted the colour density a little to bring out some of the colours that we would normally not see.

Night Skies 1

ISO 3200, 19mm f/4.0  30 secs 

ISO 3200,  19mm f/4.0  120secs (4x 30 sec images stacked)

ISO 2500, 17mm F/4.0  120sec

ISO 1600  17mm  F/4.0  60 sec

 Last Friday (25th March 2022), with the promise of clear skies I decided to go in search of some stars. 

I went to South Stacks on Anglesey, and although I had planned to go by myself I was pleased to have my brother with me as it is quite remote and it was pitch black. It was also good as we were both experimenting with astrophotography so we could bounce ideas off each other and share some of the excitement of seeing so many stars.

I took some shots of the sky above our head but the problem with that is I have no means of identifying exactly what I was looking at and I had set my lens at 40mm by mistake so I didn't really have a wide enough view for the shots to be of any great interest. I did however get some good shots looking across the sea, some facing south west with the lighthouse in the shot (which I will share tomorrow) and these which are facing due south and capture the headland illuminated by the passage of the beam from the lighthouse.

The first shot as you will see was a 30 second exposure and the second shot is a stack of 4 identical images with the same settings so giving a combined exposure of 2 minutes. By stacking the images (in some software called Sequator) it is possible to reduce the level of noise in the image and sharpen up the star images.

The third and fourth images are single exposures but they are tracked images in that I had mounted my camera on a star tracking mount which rotates the camera to compensate for the rotation of the earth and so keep the stars aligned so I can get sharp images of the stars (rather than smudged lines) without having to stack images. If I had stacked several of these images it would have been possible to get even sharper and less noisy images (I should have reduced the ISO for these shots too but I am still learning so I will bear that in mind for next time). With the 2 minute exposure the foreground image is too blurry for my liking and I think the 60 second exposure is probably the limit.

However I have to say I am very happy with these images. Just standing under the night sky there were so many stars visible but by using the long exposure and the tracking mount it was possible to capture so many more stars than are visible to the naked eye. As the night wore on (we were there from 1:30 to 4:30am) and dawn approached we could track the movement of stars across the horizon and you can see that in the pictures above. For example in the first image the bright orange star at the centre of the horizon is Antares but in the subsequent images it has moved up and to the left.

The bright glow to the lower left is not light pollution but is the light from distant galaxies and nebulae and this all just blows my mind at the vastness and beauty of the universe.

Please look out for some different images tomorrow and then after that I will post my favourite two images from this great night out.

Starry Starry Night

 

So I have interrupted my intended series of "A Few Days in December" by posting these night sky images that I shot last night and really didn't want to put them off to a later date.

As you can see from the first image (taken using the night sight mode on my Pixel 6Pro) I had set my camera up on the beach using my Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro star tracking mount. It really is a cool piece of kit that I am just getting to know.

There have been a couple of nights recently when we were promised clear skies and I have been desperate to get out to shoot the night sky. Last week there was very little moon but sadly too much cloud spoiled things and I couldn't get any good images, I just got very cold for nothing. Although every minute getting to know your kit is time well spent (that's me putting a positive spin on a failed trip).

Last night however the sky was clearer but the moon was more than half full and very bright so as well as the light pollution from Liverpool and Deeside I was up against excess light. Never mind, I am not making excuses and I didn't let that or the biting cold stop me.

In the first image you can see my camera mounted on the tripod and tracking mount pointed north west over Liverpool Bay, the lights along the bottom are from the Burbo Bank wind farm and in the distance you can just make out the shadow of the Pennines in Lancashire. More importantly you can make out a few bright stars, the bright one most central in the image is called "Vega" and top left there are a few from the constellation Cygnus, the bright star at the top is called "Deneb".

The second image is the shot that I captured it is an image comprised of 5 stacked photos using some software called Sequator which is fantastic and so easy to use. Each individual photo was a 2 minute exposure so using this process lots more light is picked up by the camera sensor and more distant objects that the naked eye cannot see become visible. Hence in this patch of sky which has the constellation of Cygnus we can see thousands of stars which are just not there in the first image, if you zoom in you will see what I mean. For reference the brightest star lower right in the second image is Vega. What you also can see in the second image is the range of colours of the different stars and galaxies which are not just white but reds, greens and purple. It really is a beautiful universe.

The third image is also comprised of five stacked images. It is facing south and although the stars are not quite as crisp in this image I really like the picture because the foreground adds context to the overall image. Also I think the stars are probably more recognisable to most people this being "Sirius" (the brightest star lower down in the centre) and the constellation of Orion with the three stars in a line forming Orion's belt and above that are Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. If you look closely you will see more than just three stars along the belt and the three stars below it are actually part of distant galaxies. As this was shot using a wide angle lens I couldn't get more detail of the distant objects but in the future that will be something I will want to explore more. For now I need to hone my skills and practice with the equipment and hope for clear skies.

Out of this World

Several months ago I purchased a Star Tracker mount so that I could do some deep space astrophotography. You may recall that last year I captured a fairly nice shot of comet Neowise over Castlerigg in Cumbria and I thought at the time that I would love to do more astrophotography but I was limited to only short exposures without a tracker mount. So I bought the mount and ordered a control cable to make the most of the wifi capability but that only arrived a few weeks ago so again I was limited to what shots I could take and to be honest the mount was left in its box while I waited for the cable and then for clear skies.

On Friday night, with the promise of a clear sky and having watched a few tutorials online I headed up to Bolton Abbey hoping to capture some shots of the priory with the core of the Milky Way rising in the background. I had a very clear image in mind and I was excited as I set off with high hopes. Imagine my frustration when I arrived to find the site closed off and no way to get the image I had visualised. I was ready to pack it in and go home but on the way back took a detour to Gisburn Forest which is a dark sky site and thought I would try for some deep space objects.

So the image above is just one of the shots I took. Bear in mind I am new to this type of photography and just getting to grips with the equipment so I took some time setting up and although I took four different views of the night sky I took multiple exposures of each view so capturing each final image took between 20 and 30 minutes. This first image was a 6 minute exposure and is exactly how it appeared in camera. I thought I had pushed the exposure a bit too far and the stars are starting to stretch, and although there are some nice colours visible I wasn't convinced I would have a useable image to show for my efforts.

However I have used an image stacking program called Sequator and stacked 5 images, all 6 minute exposures of the above view using the tracking mount and thanks to the magic of technology the flaws in the individual image have been corrected to produce this final image... 

 I have to say that I am so very pleased with this image, the first deep space photo I have produced. I can see faults with it and that is something I can try to address in  future pictures, as I say there is always so much to learn.

The other thing I need to do is learn more about the stars and constellations as although I am thrilled to have captured such bright and colourful objects I have no clear idea what they are. I do have some very clever apps that would tell me, in the field (quite literally) but I didn't think to make a note at the time so for now I am just going to have to enjoy the image and next time I go out I will pay more attention to those details.

Star Light Star Bright

 

I have wanted to get into astrophotography for a while but previous attempts to photograph the night sky had resulted in disappointing images, there are so many things to consider; the strength of the moon, light pollution, exposure time, time of the year etc. I know that multiple exposures and stacking images in post production is a thing but I still don't know how to do it.

 Last summer when I photographed comet neowise over Castlerigg I managed to get a decent image using the longest exposure possible with my equipment but I have seen so many really excellent images since then that I knew I would need a different set up if I am to get the sort of images I crave. The more I have looked the more I have wanted to explore the night sky and capture images of deep space objects; planets, stars, constellations, bright nebulae, planetary nebulae, dark nebulae, galaxies, galaxy clusters and more, things I didn't even realise existed.

I decided I would need to invest in a star tracker mount and so I did a little research and saved up and I recently took delivery of a Sky Watcher, Star Adventurer 2i. I have been itching to set it up and start to practice but so far there have been no clear night skies so it had remained in its box. I have looked at videos and blogs trying to pick up some tips and I have been checking the forecast in the hope that there would  be a break in the clouds long enough to put it to the test.

Last night there was a promise of a few hours and so I headed out to the beach with everything set up but sadly there were few breaks in the clouds and so I wasn't able to get a clear image. There was no point trying to do multiple images of the same spot in the sky because of the clouds but I did try out a few long exposures. I realise as I look at them now that I didn't take note of what I was focusing on so they're just random images of the stars with the wispy clouds passing by. What is clear however is that having used a 2 minute exposure the mount has worked amazingly well, even doing just a very simple polar alignment, the stars remain sharp and perfectly round. What is also amazing to me is the range of colours and the density of the objects out there.

So I know they're not great pictures but they are a start and if you look closely you will see patterns of star clusters and perhaps other objects light years away. I am so glad to have invested in the tracker that has meant these long exposures have been possible and I am now going to do a little more research and keep my fingers crossed for some clear skies.

Ursa Major and the Milky Way

Following on from last night's super moon I thought I would share some more pictures of heavenly bodies.

These photos are from my very first attempt at photographing the night sky.  They were taken in Cumbria on the night of the 18th September. I wasn't trying to capture any particular constellations I was really just practicing to try and get the settings right.  I was amazed to see a sky so full of stars and the milky way so bright and spent quite some time looking up in awe. All of the pictures above were taken using a 30 second exposure.

Today is the first time I have looked at these pictures properly and I was thrilled to see in the first picture Ursa Major being so clear so I had to post that one first.

I saw a number of shooting stars on that night and I cannot be sure whether the light trail in the second picture (and the fainter ones in the fourth and fifth shots) are shooting stars or light trails from aircraft. I hope they are shooting stars.

I cannot identify the constellations in the other pictures but in picture three there is a bright planet just right of centre, it has a particular glow around it and I am curious as to which planet (if any) it is.

I had such a good time taking these pictures and just observing the night sky.  I will definitely be doing it again and maybe I will try doing some star trails.  I think I need to learn a bit more so I can try and photograph the specific constellations.  If anybody viewing this can tell me what can be seen in these pictures I would be very grateful.