FenlandPaul

Just such wonderful dustiness on display there, Lee. Very excited to see you enjoying the new lens. I love how the Summer Triangle pops - not always easy to achieve. 👍

I like very much! What a great composition and so good to get the core nice and in-light-polluted right down to the horizon. Placing yourself in the image definitely brings it together. Great job. 👏👏

That’s super exciting, Lee. Just getting the stars on a landscape image is such a thrill - and I really hope that that 14mm of yours is a 👌. You never know, sometimes those other folk out there at silly o’clock are also shooting Astro. I encountered someone at the radio telescope dishes outside Cambridge once; he was also there to shoot the Milky Way and once we both realised we weren’t wrong’uns, we had a great chat and compared techniques and kit (he was a lot better than me!!).

Thanks so much. If you mean the streaks going past, I think the brighter ones were planes. A few faintest satellites in there too. This area gets some fairly feisty storm surges at times, so I think I’d get the hebegebees too during spring tides and storms!

Thanks Ian - I agree - the star trails image came together very nicely and against my expectation became my favourite image from the night. Mudflats definitely create some challenges - first steps are often tentative!! Glad you enjoyed the video journal - I thoroughly enjoy making these, despite the added complexity they create out in the field!

Thanks Lee - that's very kind. You should see the number of times I mess up with two cameras (dead battery in intervalometer, didn't insert an SD card etc etc etc)! It's always simplest to find some great local places to shoot from - that way there's little at stake if the weather turns or the shot doesn't quite work out. I've had a few longer distance trips during which the clouds have confounded the forecasts and I've ended up with nothing, which is never encouraging. Plus going local really encourages you to think differently about where you live. I understand about the out-alone thing. I used to get jittery quite easily (although the biggest scare I had turned out to be two inquisitive cows!!) but over time I've realised that anyone who happens to be out there is probably more nervous of me than vice versa!! Really looking forward to seeing your images and how you develop. 😊

Excellent. With your compositional eye and liberal supply of foregrounds, I’m looking forward to that!

Thanks, Paul. Well, normal’s relative, isn’t it?! ”Proper” nightscapers frown on star trails, but it’s one of my favourite images to date. So I guess that makes me not a proper nightscaper….

Thank you, Magnus, that’s very kind. Just trying to learn more and more, with a boat load of mistakes (and wasted trips) along the way!

Thanks Jim, that’s very kind. I hadn’t expected the star trail image to be my favourite from the evening, but it turned out that way.

I can't believe I'm sharing my 50th astrolandscape - it's been such good fun shooting these and sharing with you all. I've thoroughly enjoyed your comments and suggestions and look forward to the next 50 (although I'll need better weather than we've had so far this year for that to be possible in the near future!). Last new moon, I headed up to the Norfolk coast to a place I last visited on Boxing Day night - Snettisham Beach, famous for its vast tidal mudflats that attract migrating birds in staggering numbers. It was - amazingly for a new moon - forecast to be clear all night on every forecast model I could find, so it seemed like an opportune time to plan an all-nighter. I felt a bit cheeky doing this as it was a school night, but coffee was made for a reason and it's clear that reason was astronomers. My foreground subject for the evening was the large dilapidated jetty, which was built in the Second World War to allow gravel extracted from the nearby pits to be moved by boat, destined to help build the concrete runways needed to support the American bombers being stationed in the UK. I was accompanied all night by the incredible sound of the birds out on the flats - they never ceased and it was a fantastic soundtrack to the crystal clear night. I had a few shots planned for the night. First of all I set up two timelapses from opposite sides of the jetty - one to capture the Milky Way rising and one to capture a star trails shot. I left these running for a few hours while I went for a nap in a bird hide that overlooks the beach. When I woke, I set about my main shots for the night - a Milky Way arch panorama over the jetty, and a tracked, stacked Milky Way shot also above the jetty, which I ended up completing just as astronomical twilight was starting (so probably didn't stack as many as I'd have liked). If you're interested, I also filmed a vlog / journal of the night, which I've linked at the bottom of this post. Hope you enjoy and would love any comments / suggestions etc. 😊 Star Trails I named this image "Serpentine"; I love the curved channel in the mudflat and the wonderful mudcracks. It was shot on a Canon 6D with a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens with 319x 30s exposures at ISO400. The foreground was a single shot at 120s at ISO800 (with long exposure noise reduction). The star trails were assembled in StarStax and the foreground and trails were blended in Photoshop. Milky Way timelapse Shot with a Canon 6D and Samyang 24mm f/1.4 lens at f/2. 1,164 x 10s exposures at ISO6400. Timelapse assembled in LRTimelapse with additional editing in Lightroom and Premiere pro. This version is a low resolution rendering optimised for Twitter - the full HD version is in the vlog at the bottom. 20230419 Snettisham Old Jetty MW timelapse (Twitter version).mp4 Milky Way arch panorama Shot on an astro-modified Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8. 2 rows and 6 columns (shot in landscape orientation), with each panel comprising 4 stacked shots of 20s each at ISO6400. Panes stacked in Sequator, panorama stitched in Microsoft ICE and final image edited in PhotoShop. Milky Way tracked Shot with an astro-modified Canon 6D and Samyang 24mm f/1.4 lens, and a Skywatcher Star Adventurer for the tracked shots. Foreground 120s at ISO1600 at f/4. Sky 6x 120s exposures at ISO800 and f/2.8. Stacked using Sequator and assembled and edited in PhotoShop. Video journal / vlog Here's a link to the journal I made of the night. If you enjoy this sort of thing, please do consider subscribing to my YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/@nightscapejournals).

Beautiful images. You’ve really managed to push that exposure time with the Polaris - I hadn’t come across that but of kit before but it looks very interesting. I’ve noticed a feature of Norway is that ostensibly unspoilt, wild areas can often have very harsh lights at night! A product of long winter nights and cheap electricity I guess!

Love the composition, Paul. That hill is made for panos! Looks like a glorious night.

Lee I am so SO chuffed you captured this. 🤩 Can I just remind you of an exchange we had a few days ago?! 🤣 Looks like your wish was granted.

Oooh, new toy! That looks wonderfully clean, Paul. And there’s no harm in lots of barns - definitely a positive feature of your part of the world!

That sounds like an idyllic way to spend the early morning. Nice images too. 👍

Beautiful. You had a fantastic display! I love the colours on the first timelapse.

Thanks Paul. 😊 We’re tentatively considering February. Might be an order of magnitude colder then, but worth it!

Thank you, Neil. Glad you liked it. They’re captivating to watch!

Thank you so much - that means a lot.

Really kind - thank you. 😊

I was fortunate to have another trip to arctic Norway last week, this time to the island of Langøya. Our main objective again was to shoot some timelapse sequences of the northern lights, this time in moonlit skies and landscapes. We were fighting cloud and blizzards for much of the week, but we did manage a couple of superb, memorable nights. Here’s a short compilation of timelapses from one of the nights, together with the first part of a video journal I shot, which includes some real-time footage shot with the incredible Sony A7S. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it inspires someone to make the unforgettable journey to the arctic to see this wonderful spectacle. 😊

Just caught up on this, Paul. Wow. Wow. Wow. What an amazing set of images and, blimey, did you time that trip well!! Those are once-in-a-lifetime images for sure. 🤩

Lovely, Paul. When I saw it on Twitter, I hadn't appreciated the h-alpha as well - a real testament to the fantastic skies you have there. Cracking light painting too. 👍

Both great images, Paul, and a superb record of the comet when viewed together, giving great context. I hadn’t scrolled down to see the deeper image initially, but read your exif and thought what a crazy focal length blend that was!! Then I realised…. 🤣