New to start trails - first attempts

While on vacation last month in Maine, with the nice dark(and finally clear) skies, I got my first attempts in at star trails! I have been waiting and waiting, but weather in Nashville area has been cloudy for weeks... Overall, I am excited with my results. Still have some cleanup on first image, but son is home and schooling is priority.

Any thoughts and comments appreciated!

This is the first first attempt. Most of the way into my shoot, my father in law turned on the dock lights for some reason, so I had to remove 9-10 photos. I am going to crop and try again on this, to see if I can keep those effected photos in, so it doesn't give those weird lines in. Plus work on removing the plane trails. 150 photos

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S2kAtTracks wrote in post #19104322
This is attempt 2 a few nights later. Much better! 185 photos

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forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Thanks!

Great work man.

GlimmerMan wrote in post #19108272
Great work man.

Appreciate it!

Very nice start. I love star trails and have been working on them for a while. I'll offer the two biggest tips that took my a while to learn and might help you avoid some of the time it took me to get really comfortable. 1) Unlike Milky Way shots, a bit of moonlight will actually help most star trail shots. Try to shoot with the moon behind you and it will light up your foreground nicely. 2) You don't need to crank your aperture all the way open and you don't need the ISO to be really high. I shoot a lot of star trails at f5.6 and ISO1000. Really cuts down on the noise. You do lose some of the fainter stars, but you still have plenty for the effect you want. Here is a photo I took with about 1/2 moon and an ISO 1000.

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