FenlandPaul

Absolute legend, Lee - that’s fantastic!! Really well done. Great image and Timelapse. So chuffed for you. 👏👏👏

Yep that’s the one for me. Nice crop. 👍

I think you need to give the folk at Bamburgh a light painting lesson! Given how tough it is, I think you’ve done a great job. Nice sky and foreground, and when you zoom in on the castle it’s clear you’ve controlled things really well there too. It grows on me the more I look at it. 👍

Really appreciate that, Lee - thank you. It means a lot. I think Last Resting Place is my favourite too. Still can’t fathom how the boat managed to get there. I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere. Welcome to East Anglia!!

Superb image, Gerr!! Envious of how dark and star-studded the skies must have been! Also slightly amused by how long the 14 seconds of your selfie exposure must have felt as you stood there, precariously on that outcrop!!

Very nice, Paul. Bet it gets windy up on those fells! Leo’s always a cracker as a Sky subject. And nice to do a bit of Galaxy hunting.

Thanks Dave - I'd love to get to Kelling one of these years! Thanks Josef - I would like to have explored it properly during daylight first!

Over the bank holiday weekend I was feeling rather sombre, having learned on the Friday about the sudden passing of Alyn Wallace. I just wanted to be on my own under the stars. I had a few people message me to ask if I wanted to head out shooting on the Saturday night, when we were expecting some decent skies in part of East Anglia, but more than ever I needed the solitude so I politely declined (always feel bad about that, and I don't mean to be unsociable, but I don't think I would have been particularly entertaining company anyway). If you're one of those people - sorry. So a couple of hours before dusk I started the 2 hour drive up to the North Norfolk coast to Brancaster Staithe, the marshy harbour separated from the majestic Brancaster Beach by a complex web of tidal creeks, marshland topped with tufts of grass, and mudflats. I'd visited only very briefly at night before, to suss out the harbour area, but never been on the marshes, so some intense Google Earthing earlier in the day had indicated some potentially promising areas from which to shoot, albeit I wasn't entirely sure how the Spring tides would impact access. As with many of these coastal locations, I was accompanied through the night by the most amazing sounds of the wildlife - exotic sounding birds and, at one point, a sustained gurgling noise whose origin I couldn't fathom. Clouds came and went, but that didn't matter as I wasn't after any award-winning shots - I just wanted to be immersed under the heavens, taking it all in and allowing the previous day's news to slowly sink in. In the early hours of the morning I noticed some pinks on camera towards the north, and sure enough we had a brief aurora display, which I was able to timelapse; it looks like I missed the best of the display by 20 minutes or so, but I was pleased to have captured something at least. I'm amazed how many times I visit north Norfolk and end up with capturing a display - I think my hit rate for that is well over 50%! I began to head home at about 2am, through thick fog all the way. I was tired, yet completely restored. As always, I'm grateful for your comments and CC on the images, and if you fancy coming along for the adventure vicariously I made a video of the night, linked at the bottom. Clear skies! ✨Last Resting Place✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and Skywatcher StarAdventurer tracker 🔧 Sky: 11x 120s exposures at ISO800 and f/4. Foreground: 2x 30s exposures at ISO1600 🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in PhotoShop and Starnet++ ✨The Creek✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens 🔧 Sky: 54x20s exposures at ISO2000 and f/2.8. Foreground: 120s and 60s exposures at f/4 and ISO2000 🎞️Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop and Starnet ++ ✨Time and Tides✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 Sky: 92x 18s exposures at ISO6400 and f/2.8. Foreground 2x 60s focus-stacked exposures at ISO 6400 and f/3.5 🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in Photoshop and Starnet++ ✨Depth✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and Skywatcher StarAdventurer tracker 🔧 Sky: 11x 120s exposures at ISO800 and f/4. Foreground 1x 30s exposure at ISO 6400 and f/3.5 🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in Photoshop and Starnet++ ✨The Buoy and the Aurora✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens 🔧Single 20s exposure at ISO4000 and f/2.8 🎞️ Edited in PhotoShop ✨The Jetty and the Aurora✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens 🔧Single 6s exposure at ISO6400 and f/1.8 🎞️ Edited in PhotoShop

Very nicely done, Dave - and good opportunistic shoot. Lovely and sharp. But can we talk about the plain chocolate hobnobs? This a technique with which I'm not familiar....

Thanks all - really appreciate that. @clarkpm4242 yep I love the detail in Rho. Never quite gets high enough for my liking though!

A couple of weeks ago we had a forecast for clearing skies from around 1am, with the moon setting at 2am. That left around 2 hours for some dark-sky goodness and hopefully my first Milky Way core action of 2024. The only challenge was that it was a Sunday night, ahead of a busy week at work. But I set the alarm for 1.15am anyway, and dragged myself out of bed only to see broken cloud in front of the moon. 20 minutes of should I / shouldn't I later, and I headed down to our local nature reserve, not entirely sure if I'd made the right choice but knowing that I would torture myself if I stayed at home wondering what might have been. I only had a few compositions in mind after visiting earlier that day - nothing dramatic or epic, but some simple Fenland scenes of wood piles, dead trees and still pools. As the morning drew on, the cloud shifted and I was treated to the rising Milky Way and a sky full of stars. I was so glad I made myself go out, with the ultimate reward of watching the dawn surrounded by the wonderful sounds of the local birdlife. Aside from the images below, I made a video of the night over on my Nightscape Journals YouTube channel - linked at the end if you're interested. Thoughts and comments always welcome and hugely appreciated! ✨Cut Down✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 1x 10s exposure at f/2 and ISO2000 🎞️ Edited in Photoshop ✨Teasel Core✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Samyang 35mm f/1.4 lens with SkyWatcher StarAdventurer tracker 🔧 Sky: 41x 30s exposure at f/2.8 and ISO800 (+ dark frames). Foreground: 1x10s at f/4 and ISO1250 🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in Photoshop and Starnet++ ✨Scorpius Aquae✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 Sky: 24x 15s exposure at f/2.8 and ISO2000. 🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited in Photoshop ✨Logpile✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 Sky: 74x 13s exposure at f/1.8 and ISO1600. Foreground: 1x13s at f/1.8 and ISO1600 🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in Photoshop and Starnet++

Nice one, Lee. Love how you've got the brighter stars really popping. I know what you mean about lots to remember!

Nicely done, Lee! No-one minds that kind of photobombing! 👌

Very nice. Lovely and clear for most of the night in Norfolk last night.

I find it both surreal and heartbreaking to write this. As some of you may now have seen, the astrophotographer Alyn Wallace has tragically passed away, cruelly early with so much ahead of him. Alyn was an incredibly talented landscape astrophotographer, pushing forward and popularising the art through his wonderfully produced YouTube videos. He was generous with his time and knowledge, encouraging many (including me) to pick up a camera and give it a go. His epic and beautifully printed book Photographing the Night Sky, published by FotoVue, is encyclopaedic and will be picked up by astrophotographers for years to come. The legacy from his tragically short life will endure for years to come. Paul

Thank you - yes it was an amazing night! All the best to your wife - hope the op is a success and life returns to its fullness. Those are great times to go - never been on a cruise but I imagine it encourages a much more relaxed approach to aurora watching - something I could learn from!! Paul

Exciting-sounding trip!! It’s unlikely that cloud over the horizon will impede your view. If it’s kicking off, the it’ll be a lot higher than any tropospheric cloud so if you’re clear reasonably locally you stand a good chance of catching it, if the auroral oval is sufficiently far south. In the biggest displays of the last 12 months, it’s regularly been seen / photographed from Kent so London isn’t necessarily an issue for you. You’ll have seen that it’s now becoming quite common for people to pick it up on camera in Norfolk, with relatively dark skies over the North Sea - remarkable really!!

Thank you - very kind. Exciting you’re off to the north! I’d love to get over there again and very much hope we can, though likely next year now. Great time of year to go - good luck!

I absolutely love that landscape, Paul. 👌

Very nice, Paul. You really found the perfect hill for the arch! How have you found the Astro-mod? Looks superb.

Wow, you’re on fire at the moment @Gerr!! I love the foreground and the balance, especially with the colour contrast between the comet and Mirach. Is that a hint of comet reflection there in the lake too? magical stuff.

Got to make the most of things this year!! ☁️ Thanks Lee -really appreciate that. I did indeed have fun, which surprised me as I’m usually a solitary shooter. So I learned something about myself!!

Thank you, Mick. I sometimes get a bit blasé about the windmill as it’s so familiar to me. But it is a lovely structure!

A couple of weeks ago we had a forecast break from this perma-cloud that seems to have descended across the UK. It was a Sunday evening, with an early start for work on the Monday, but I couldn't let the opportunity go to waste, especially as the aurora data was going bananas (very impressed envious by all the images caught across the north and west of the UK that night). An initial trip to a location I'd scouted a few weeks earlier ended up being a dud, as I decided (possibly unfairly) that the lone tree was also not a particularly attractive tree. So I headed a couple of miles away to another of the dishes at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory outside Cambridge, somewhere I'd shot earlier in the year. This time I was at the impressive 32m dish that's part of the Merlin array (along with Jodrell Bank), which is still in-use and on the night was whirring away as it collected data from distant sources. Unusually for me, I ended up meeting up with a few other astrophotographers from a local WhatsApp group, one of whom had obtained permission for us to enter the grounds of the observatory to get more favourable compositions. A stubborn frontal cloud dissected the sky for much of the night, leaving a decent window from the north west to the south east; unfortunately the north remained obscured for most of the evening, and none of the outstanding parts of the aurora display were visible (though I caught the weak remnants at the very end of the night on the way home). But that meant we had a great view of Orion from a site that was surprisingly dark given it's only 5 miles from the centre of Cambridge (although not immune from poorly directed security lights!). My focus was on some simple compositions including the magnificent dish; definitely somewhere at which I'd like to spend more time. I also made a Nightscape Journal of the night, which you can find linked at the bottom. As always, I'd welcome feedback, suggestions and comments! Ordinarily I'd give my images a name, but I've really struggled with these so if you have any suggestions I'd be all ears! Enjoy. 😊 ✨MERLIN AND ORION✨ 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and Skywatcher StarAdventurer for tracking the sky 🔧 Sky (tracked): 6x60s exposures at f/2.8 ISO 800. Foreground: 1x10s exposure at f/4 ISO 2000 (LENR on) 🎞️ Sky stacked in DSS. Edited and assembled in PhotoShop. ✨MERLIN AND ORION (UNTRACKED)✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 18x10s exposures at f/2.2 ISO 2000. 🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in PhotoShop. ✨MERLIN AND THE LION✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens 🔧 Sky: 1x20s exposure at f/2.8 ISO 2000 with Kase Starglow filter. Foreground: 1x20s exposure at f/2.8 ISO 2000 🎞️ Edited and assembled in PhotoShop. ✨DYING BACK✨ 📷 Canon 6D with Samyang 35mm f/1.4 lens 🔧 Single 10s exposure at ISO3200 and f/2.8 🎞️ Edited in PhotoShop.

Thanks Dave - very kind. The priority is the guests but I hope I’ll be able to capture a low-key video to give a glimpse of what it’s like there. Super excited.