My first startrails

Hi all. After looking at this sub forum for a while, I thought I'd have a go at startrails.

Please tell me how I can improve on this style of photography. I know I have a lot to learn!!!

I shot 22 *2 minute shots and used startrails v1.1 to stack them.
I had to stop prematurely, as I let the camera go for a while, but went back outside to check about 40 minutes later and noticed the dew point had been reached and things where starting to get damp and my lens was fogged up, so I called it a night. I can see this has resulted in the last few shots being darker and thus the trails seem to taper off at the bottom (on the right side)

I used my remote timer to do the shooting, but left a 2 second gap between shots. Somehow I thought this small of a delay between shots would be ok, but when layered up in the startrails program, I can see the gaps. I don't know if this is from the software, or the simple fact of delaying the shots by 2 seconds?


I used my 17-85 IS @17mm. I know this lens suffers from horrible distortion at 17mm, as you can see but it's all I have. Also next time I go out I will go to a south facing ocean cliff I know of that will give me a BIG sky. This is in my paltry backyard, but was more of a test.

I knew where "south" was, so I just pointed that way. Not very technical I know, but I'm very new to all of this, but keen to learn more. I am assuming the centre point of the stars in this shot is "celestial" south???

Can I ask someone to confirm the southern cross in the single still please with the circle around it? I know there is a "fake" one that confuses people and want to confirm. And anything else that may be of interest you all with "night sky eyes" can see. What is the cluster with the question mark?

Sorry for the long winded post, but when it was being layered all I was thinking was "how cool is this"! as it slowly appeared on the screen. I'm keen to get back out now!!!

oh, any tips to avoiding dew on the lens?

At the time of posting, this image is only about an hour old BTW and represents 43 minutes.

Cheers

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Well done.
Yes, the center point is the South Celestial Pole. It's a handy thing to know. When you get that first equatorial mount telescope (you know the bug is biting) you can plonk it down where your tripod was, aim it just above the tree and you've within a few degrees of the pole.

Yes, that's the Southern Cross (Crux). The two pointer stars to the left of it are Alpha Centauri (you may have heard of that one) and Beta Centauri. They are nice and bright and point to the real Southern Cross. The other crosses are dimmer, have no bright pointers and just don't look right compared to the real thing.

The cluster is IC2602 or the Southern Pleiades. Above that and to the right is a bit of a smudge which is the Eta Carina nebula.

Steve

Hi Steve. Thanks for the info!

Yes, I had heard of Alfa and Beta Centurai, but had no idea where they were. Am I right in saying it (alpha) is the nearest Galaxy to us?

Thanks for the info on the other things of note in the image, esp the smudge. I noticed that when doing the image and I assumed to be "just" a big mass of stars.

I should go and pick up a night sky chart next time I go in town.

I'd like to utilise the 100-400 somehow for more than just the moon, but I assume I need some kind of tracking tripod to shoot things like the nebula and the Southern Pleiades? Is this what an equatorial mount will or is there a way to do it with a fixed tripod?

Alpha is the nearest star (system) to our Sun. It's a system because if you look at with a telescope you'll see that there are two stars there. There's also a third dim star involved called Proxima Centauri which is 'the' closest star. Nothing's simple, eh !

There are some good planetarium programs available on the net. Stellarium is a popular one to start with. It will you tell what's visible if you tell it your location and time.

An equatorial mount is a type of tracking mount that rotates around the celestial pole. Other (alt-az) mounts will track fine for looking at things but have problems with photography.

I'd like to utilise your 100-400L too. Feel free to send it over.
Longer focal lengths,getting further from the pole and longer exposures all add to the difficulty.
I'm not sure how it would go with so much foreground stuff, but you could try stacking the same images with Deep Sky Stacker so that the stars are stacked on top of each other. Your stars will still be oval, but you may get to see some milky way and more of the nebula.

Steve.

Wow, thanks for the info Steve!
I just downloaded Stellarium and what an amazing piece of software! I think I'll be doing a bit of stargazing tonight.

Thanks again for the help

alfa is gonna hit us one day! the others are moving away.

RadAL wrote in post #8157547
alfa is gonna hit us one day!

Now there is the excuse I need to buy an 11-16 if ever there was one!