FenlandPaul

Beautiful, Callum. What a location to see it from!

Some great outbursts there, Earl! I have to say that a hot tub + aurora is a killer combination!

Very nice, Paul. Well done for grabbing the clear skies while you could!!

Good points @AstroNebulee. Very cool that you’ve been selling locally - great validation of your work! As @clarkpm4242says, all we need is some decent clear nights now! It’s been over a month since I’ve managed a night out and I’m going slightly up the wall!!

Super interesting post, Dave. I’ve used light painting and low level lighting in my images, and both can work in different contexts. Ive usually fixed the colour balance in post and not had issues, but getting the brightness right can be really hard as different screens and platforms render the image so differently - I’ve published some stuff that looked exactly as I intended on one laptop, only to view it later on another device and thought “crikey that’s gaudy”! Personally at the moment for “big” foregrounds I prefer long exposures with no artificial lighting. But this changes over time. In the images above, I think I prefer your ambient Orion image, but both are nice. Really enjoy experimenting and hearing different opinions on this!

Belter of a catch, though! I’d say the other 399 were worth the investment to get that one! 😊

Thank you. Wow, they’re fantastic shots. You guys to the east definitely had the luck of the clear skies! So much colour in those!

Beautiful image and edit. 👌

Gorgeous composition and execution, Paul. Lovely textures. Sorry it was so cloudy for your visit!

Gorgeous, Chris. So glad you got some good shots. What a location!!

This reminds me of when I used to mess about with my dad’s SLR in our garden back in the early 1990s!! Thank you!

Looked crystal clear all night! Very nice. 😊

Thanks Mike - yes, the activity levels dropped quite rapidly at around 9.30 unfortunately, and everyone was dodging cloud to some extent! Thanks Dave - I wish the cloud had held off a bit longer for the timelapse - would love to have seen what was going on behind it! Thanks Lee, as ever. I think this one might have to be printed and go up on the wall!

Well, Monday night turned out to be a cracker! Here on the edge of the Fens we have an abundance of beautiful windmills. There's one just outside our village and I've used it a few times as a foreground for astro shots. But until a few months ago, it had been without its sails for a few years while they were being restored. I'd wanted for a while I capture the Autumn Milky Way over the windmill, especially now it was restored to its former glory. So that was the plan on Monday night; I'd lined up permission from the owner of the adjacent field to take some shots from there as that had the best angle. The weather was looking good, if a little breezy, with some feisty weather fronts having blown through during the day, leaving the air gloriously clear. But then it all went nuts. I was aware there was a good chance of some interesting magnetic activity, and a few hours earlier the earth seemed to be hit by the detritus from a filament eruption. So I figured there was a reasonable chance of catching some colour in the sky; I'd captured some faint green a few months earlier, and it had whetted my appetite to get a frame full of colour one day. A few minutes after I arrived, while it was still twilight, I took some test shots and there were already deep purples and reds on the camera. Awesome. Clouds were starting to roll in from the south west, threatening my northern horizon, but bright pillars started to dance rapidly just before the cloud concealed things for a while. Tantalizing glimpses of deep purples and reds could be seen on camera through sporadic gaps - I wonder what I missed! But, after years of waiting, I managed to get the shot I'd dreamed of - the windmill with bright, colourful aurora in the sky behind. I know it could have been better if the sky had stayed clear for a few minutes longer, but it's important not to get greedy with these things! I went home a very happy man. What made it more special is that so many people caught great images that night - I never tire of them. I'm often asked if I could see these with the naked eye; I know people relatively nearby who definitely could see the pillars, but as I was faffing about with cameras and video equipment my dark adaptation suffered and so unfortunately I didn't. As ever, I made a Nightscape Journal video to bring you along for the ride - you can see the timelapse in that. Enjoy, and let me know if you managed to get some shots that night too. Paul 📷 Canon 6D with Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM lens 🔧 Single 2.5s exposure at f/1.8 and ISO1600 🎞️ Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop

Superb, Mike - that is definitely on my list of places I'd love to travel to and be nocturnal with a camera! Love the composition. Paul

Oh dear! It's definitely not a fail-safe method - I probably should have flagged that! 😂 Managed to get out earlier this week and hopefully will have a write-up and video out in the next few days - just juggling with work travel and the like, but will hopefully have it done before the weekend. 😊

Nicely done, Lee!! Love the way the Plough stands out so we’ll. Quiye envious of your lone tree - all mine seem to have friends!

Really looking forward to seeing more!

Fantastic images to see and you should be proud of those. The top one is a favourite, with a lovely simple composition and nice blend. The detail in the MW is lovely. I like the intriguing quality of the foreground glow in the second image - I just want to know what’s round the corner! But for my taste the blend is a little abrupt (unless the sky is really that dark, in which case I’m going there tomorrow!!) - something I’m often guilty of - and my head can’t quite compute the star trails in the reflection with the non-trailing sky; I wonder if you cloned out the trails and maybe even simulated a reflection with layers, it might be an interesting look. But both are superb. 👍

I’m here to tell the tale!!

Thanks Paul. Indeed. Tonight potentially looking promising but the fields will be pretty soggy after last night's deluge. Thank you very much - appreciated. Always envious of your location right on the coast - lots of lovely foreground opportunities over that way!

That bomb story is glorious! Brilliantly eccentric. 😊

Thanks Lee - appreciated. It was nice to have those few extra degrees of Milky Way to play with!!

Fantastic, Lee. 👏👏 Love the story behind the hut, which you’ve light painted nicely. I suspect that is indeed aurora, which was reasonably active on Wednesday evening after a bonkers Tuesday. So great to see you out doing these shots. 👍

Thank you - that’s very kind. It would mean the world to me if someone gave it a go off the back of my images and videos! 😊