My first attempt at startrails

[Kasrielle]

And I'm hooked. These were taken from my back deck early yesterday morning. I couldn't get around the house to a spot where I could focus on Polaris, so it's only a partial view. But I'm amazed at how many stars the camera can pick up, when I can only count 7 or 8 in the sky...

I took about 75 shots at 20 seconds, with 2 dark, and stacked them in the startrails.de program. Only other PP is resizing and cropping out the power poles and lines from the bottom of the shot.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2653/4098819309_f148ae86bf_b.jpg

[Stargazerfrank]

nice try what caused the skip in the trail.

[Celestron]

Very nice for your begining .

[Kasrielle]

nice try what caused the skip in the trail.

Would that be from the shot I took with the lens cap on? I unlocked the remote and then took a 20sec shot with the cap on, then locked the remote on again for the rest of the shots.

Leads me to ask, do you take the dark shots at the beginning and end to avoid this? Or should you take dark shots at intervals throughout the length of the shoot?

[Adrena1in]

For star trails you want to take the dark shot at the start or the end really. The stars carry on moving while you're doing it you see, so do the dark in the middle and you'll have a gap. No matter, still a great shot.

By the way, it's 2009. ;)

[Kasrielle]

^LOL - see that's what I get for working on my pics when I'm home with flu...!

Ok - dark shot at beginning and end. Cool - thanks!