I tried to shoot star trails last week, but it was a little hazy. Last night was much better. Once the tripod was set up and facing the southern sky, the first thing visible was Scorpio. This is a 30 minute exposure.
32mm, f/5, ISO 100, 30 minutes
02
Jul
08
I’ve never tried this, but would love to someday. The picture makes me feel like the world is spinning very fast because of the star movement—-much like it appears when you look out a car window at trees.
I think the time lapse exposure would be a cool thing to do in a storm…maybe be lucky enough to catch a finger of lightening striking the ground.
This is very cool. I have never tried such a long exposure, but have 60 second exposures on snowy winter nights with car headlights that make for extremely awesome trails along streets. This reminds me of that….only this is waaaay better. Such patience!
That is fantastic Rob! I haven’t tried that with my D40 mainly because I doubt I could do it justice. Yours is amazing!
Thank you all very much! This was my first attempt at digital star trails, and I was surprised to see that the shot initially looked like a daytime shot. The trees had green leaves and brown trunks, the sky was pretty bright, and the only star trails that were visible were the three main vertical stars of Scorpio’s head and claws.
It took a little editing in Aperture to get the trees shilouetted and the other lighter stars pulled out of the shot. The data was there … the D60 had captured it … I just had to figure out had to get to it.
That whole shot, from exposure through editing to publishing, was just a whole lot of fun.