FenlandPaul

These are fantastic, Ger. My favourite is the selfie, for the human element, but each is great. The processing on the Cygnus MW is lovely. Interesting that PS did something better than PTGui! So far for me it’s been the other way round (although sadly neither can help correct a missed area of sky in a mosaic!!). Paul

Thanks Paul - there would have been precious little photography without it! Thank you. All the best with the trip planning. It’s a stunning place regardless, but all the more magical with the aurora!

Last week we were fortunate enough to head off for our third Norwegian trip to the oft-overlooked island of Langøya within the Arctic Circle. During the last couple of trips we've been blessed with sensational aurora - bright arcs, dancing pillars, overhead coronas - even punching through bright moonlight and at one point casting distinct shadows on the ground. This time, I took my whole family and some dear friends, excited by the prospect of showing them the magic of the northern lights, safe in the knowledge that as we edge ever closer to solar maximum - and with the spell-binding displays over the whole of the UK on numerous occasions last year - we'd be guaranteed a spectacle. Because that's the way it works, right? Hmmmm, maybe not. Find out more 👇

Great, Paul. I very much enjoy your light painted stuff, which is done so elegantly. But I love long exposure FGs at the moment for the slightly flatter look - but flat in a good way, more understated. This is superb. 👌

So much lovely crisp star detail when you zoom in, Paul - love it. I think I could do with precisely that kind of night right now. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks John. Good spot - you can see the jump in the timelapse. It was VERY frustrating! In the end I did 2 star trail images (before and after the jump) and then overlaid them to offset the slight move. It was fiddly but thankfully salvageable. Unlike the mosaics. 🤦‍♂️

Thanks Olly. Appreciated.

Thanks Alan. I love being out under the stars as a visual observer too!

Thank you - very kind. It was the cleaning up that took the time rather than the stacking - so many planes, satellites and other stuff up there! I think the green hue is just local light pollution that’s come out that colour after the way I’ve edited the stars. Shame because I’d love ti get aurora over this one day - on the list for this year!!

Thanks Paul. No, it’s IR cut only. Andy’s site is this one: http://www.astronomiser.co.uk/intro.htm

Thanks Lee - super kind. We've actually only had about 4 clear nights since the start of the year, but I've tried to max out as many of them as I could!! I appreciate the support. 🫡

Very kind - really appreciate that. Thanks so much Ger - really appreciated.

Thanks very much for watching, Jim, and for your kind comments.

Thanks Ian. I agree re the light pollution, which is just as well as it’s rather unavoidable round here! Yes I’ve played with the hue and saturation in post, as well as applying a slight spin blur. Definitely art rather than scientific accuracy in what I do! There are plenty of other people producing beautifully accurate star colour shots, so I’m trying to be a bit different in this, whilst generally getting the message out to the wider world that not all stars are white!

Very kind of you. It was really enjoyable to make. Thank you. It’s nice to have a foreground like that which isn’t hours of driving away! Shame about the local light pollution, but it could be a lot worse.

In a field about 4 miles outside Cambridge is a treasure trove of astrophysical history. Giant iron skeletons tower above the hedges and ditches, interspersed with rows of wires strung between wooden posts, resembling a dormant vineyard. This is the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, at which in 1967 a young Jocelyn Bell discovered pulsars using an instrument she helped to build. During one of the scarce clear nights in January, I visited with the intent of capturing three shots. I'd wanted to do an extended star trails image over the beautiful structure of the One Mile Telescope, a foreground that in my eyes never gets old. Additionally I'd planned two mosaics, one of the Cygnus Milky Way and one of the Orion region, both with the One Mile in the foreground. In the end I captured over 5 hours of star trails, and after painstakingly removing all the usual plane and satellite imperfections (and dealing with an accidental shift of camera position when I changed the battery), I got a shot that I'm super happy with - definitely the best star trail image I've created and I had a lot of fun with editing it. Unfortunately the two mosaics I captured proved almost completely unusable. Whilst they stitched (a miracle in itself given the haphazard way I shot them), the images suffered from horrible gradients and brightness differences that I've managed too get almost nowhere with, despite some very helpful suggestions from people over on the Image Processing part of this forum. I just couldn't get an image I was happy with - maybe some data to return to in the future, especially if I ever graduate beyond PhotoShop. I felt rather silly wasting a stunning 5 hour period by over complicating things; I should have gone for a shorter focal length and just captured more exposures, rather than going overly long (85mm) - it's not as if I was planning on printing the final image super large! So a few weeks later I returned to capture the Orion image at a much more sensible 35mm; sadly it was too late in the season to capture Cygnus as it was now well within the murk after sunset - one to save for next year (provided no work has started on the giant solar farm currently awaiting planning permission for the area!). As usual, I made a video journal of the night, which you can see below. I'd welcome any feedback and thoughts - clear skies! Paul ✨Spectral Vortex✨ 📷Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens 🔧902x 20s exposures at ISO640 and f/4 🎞️ Edited in StarStax, Lightroom and PhotoShop ✨Revealing the Unseen✨ 📷Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Samyang 35mm f/1.4 lens and SkyWatcher StarAdventurer tracker 🔧Foreground: 30s at ISO1250 f/4. Sky: 14x80s exposures at ISO800 and f/4, plus H-Alpha 5x180s exposures at ISO800 and f/2.8, p;us dark frames 🎞️ Edited and assembled in Sequator and PhotoShop

Lovely, hard-earned images Daniel! The wader-incident just adds to the story! Hope you get the Sigma sorted. 👍

I really appreciate that. I’ll have a look at that method later today (along with hopefully revisiting the location to try again with a wider lens). Definitely something to work with - massively thankful. The idea of learning another new application doesn’t fill me with excitement, so anything I can do in PS is a bonus!

Really glad you enjoyed it, Lee. Very excited to see your arch pano - wishing you clear skies for that!! Hope you’re still enjoying that Samyang 14mm!

Thanks Lee - I really appreciate that. It showed me how much faffing I usually do when I’m out!! 🤣

Taking nightscape images can be time-consuming. Most of us live under fairly mediocre skies so a drive of maybe a couple of hours to a darker location isn't uncommon, and once you've made that journey you may as well stay a while. Unless you happen to live atop a cliff or in an attractively derelict stone barn, you probably don't have the ideal foreground in your garden, so the comforts and advantages of deep sky imaging - sipping tea inside while the gear does all the work - often aren't open to you. But not everyone is able to spend hours away from home at night. Work, family, or even health concerns could mean we're limited in the time we can spend outside trying to capture usable images of the night sky. So what would happen, I wondered, if I only had an hour? An hour to leave the house, get to a decent location, capture a shot and get home. Could I capture a nightscape shot I was happy with and enjoy the experience as well? Back in January I had the perfect opportunity to give it a go. A crystal clear evening - like hens' teeth so far this year - coincided with a commitment I had later that night. So I had a crack at The 60 Minute Nightscape. And because I'm a little unhinged, I filmed a vlog of the attempt as well (hint: don't film a vlog if you want the evening to also be relaxing!). So here below is my final image and the video of its capture. It won't win any prizes, but in the circumstances I was reasonably happy, and when I posted it on my local village Facebook page it got quite the reaction. It turns out it is possible to take a nice image whilst only being away for an hour. For the avoidance of doubt, however, I don't plan to share that revelation with my wife…… Hope you enjoy…. 📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens on Skywatcher StarAdventurer tracker 🔧Sky - 13x60 second exposure at ISO 800 and f/4 + 1x300 second h-alpha exposure at ISO 800. Foreground - 1x20 second exposure at ISO 1600 🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in PhotoShop and Starnet++

Another image that sparks a combination of admiration and envy! Very nicely done - I love the contrast between the airglow and the nebulosity. I hope you’ve got some big walls to have these images printed and hung onto!!

Now that’s a special image! Congratulations - definitely a keeper and a wonderful memory. It’s fantastic. 👌

Hi all I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction, or tell me to stop pursuing a lost cause! Recently I attempted a widefield nightscape mosaic at 85mm of the Orion region. I wanted to create something super detailed, but I've ended up with a bit of a monster and now wish I'd just gone with fewer panes and a wider lens. But the night has personal significance and if I'd love it if I could salvage something. I ended up with 18 panes in the mosaic, each of which was 3x120s exposures at ISO800 and f/4, using a modded Canon 6D. I also shot flat frames "just in case" - I hadn't really expected to need them at f/4 with the Samyang 85mm (widest aperture is f/1.4). Having stacked each pane in DSS, after a bit of persuasion in PTGui the whole thing stitched, which I was delighted about. But I seem to have lots of "micro-gradients" that resemble a vignette in each frame, despite taking flats. I've never seen this before, but also I've never attempted a mosaic of this complexity before. The underlying data seems reasonable (nice stars, good detail in the Rosette etc), so I'm after suggestions around how I can clean up these horrible gradients / vignettes (obviously I'm not concerned about the bright horizon). I use PhotoShop for editing, and have tried using AstroFlat Pro, but the result is fairly ugly. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received (as I say, even if the suggestion is "don't bother, Paul") - thank you in advance. I've copied below the lightly stretched output from PTGui, together with the image map from PTGui showing how the image stitched. Paul

Very nice, Paul. Top one for my taste - I think colour suits Orion because it’s got so much variety in it. Always love seeing your locations, which I look upon with more than a little envy!!