GordonH

Last Wednesday I went out with our local cycling club "Wheel Easy" and part of the ride took us up Norwood Lane which was a long gradual climb but was well worth it for the open space and panoramic views at the top. So, on Friday afternoon I headed out with all my camera gear, thermal clothing, camp bed, food and drink loaded on my trailer and cycled up there and spent the whole night shooting time lapse of the night sky. The moon was up which created some nice lighting effects and I was also rewarded with a nice sunset and sunrise the following morning. I had e-assist fitted on my ICE Adventure HD recumbent trike a few weeks ago and it certainly made the long uphill drags a lot easier when towing my trailer. The link below is to the full time lapse video including some sunset and sunrise pictures. It is best viewed in 4K on a big screen, hope you enjoy it Norwood lane time lapse

On Friday March 25th I cycled up to Knabs Ridge wind farm on my ICE Adventure HD recumbent trike and Benpacker trailer (now my mode of transport for l my overnight time lase shoots) to shoot a night sky time lapse using the wind turbines as a foreground focal point. It is a long uphill drag all the way which was more noticeable towing a fully loaded trailer. I shot several time lapse sequences with my Sony A7iii and A7Sii cameras with Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye and 24mm f1.4 lenses and also a 360 degree time lapse with my Insta360 One X2 before heading back home the following morning. I had to set up in a lay by outside the farm as the only means of access was via a "quadruple padlocked" gate. Although there was frequent traffic on the road directly behind me it didn't cause any problems with lights. The clip at the link below is in full 4k, the actual night sky time lapse starts at 43seconds. I have also enclosed a single frame still from one of the sequences and a 360 degree star trail image taken with the Insta360 One3 X2 Knabs Ridge wind farm time lapse

I heard that comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was starting to fade so as the skies were forecast for clear last night I decided to have another crack at it while I can. I went to the same field as last week and shot a few time lapse clips of which I have selected a few stills as well. I was hoping for some Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) like I had last week but last night was even better, this is only the second time I've seen them (last week was the first) and early this morning (about 2am) they put on a really good display (all included in the video clip). I have joined last nights data with that of last week. I was particularly pleased that I got the blue ion trail last night, I was using a higher ISO as the comet was quite a bit higher up so light pollution was less of a problem than last week. I used a Sony A7iii with a Samyang 85mm f1.4 using exposures of 6 seconds at f2.8 and ISO between 800 and 6400 and a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 24mm f1.4 using exposures of 20 seconds at f2.8 and ISO between 800 and 1600. The video can be seen at the link below in 4K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBvk3s9klw

Hi all I've managed to process the time lapse data that I shot of Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) last night in the field above Nidd Gorge close by where I live. I managed to get some Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) as well which was nice. The only downside is that a small insect decided to land on my lens during the evening so there is a dark out of focus shape on some of the clips. This comet is visible to the naked eye but does show up better on camera. I have also enclosed a link to the full 4K version. The clips were shot with a Sony A7iii with a Samyang 85mm f1.4 with exposures of 5 seconds at f2.8 and ISO800 and a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 24mm f1.4 with exposures of 10 seconds at f2.8 and ISO400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vjWbaFWnUA

Hi For those that have been interested in my astroimages and time lapse videos, I had a website called "Imaging the heavens" Unfortunately the hosting site has announced that they are "pulling the plug" on June 30th and will no longer be hosting any websites so I've been having a go over the last 4 days at building a new website using Wordpress and Elementor and have managed to get something up and running, it will have a new name but the theme is largely the same ie night and astrophotography. It is called "In the still of the night". It is largely finished now apart from a few tweaks or possibility of extra pages in the future. If you'd like to have a look at how far I've got so far it can be found at the link below. There was no ".com" available but I did get a ".space" which I thought was very apt https://www.inthestillofthenight.space Best wishes Gordon

I have been working on a project for a while to try and link all my astrophotography together. I have now been taking pictures of the night sky in one way or another for the last 14 years. I started off taking pictures of deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae and star clusters) with specialist cooled cameras, filters and telescopes on computerised tracking mounts. Since moving to Harrogate in North Yorkshire I have been doing time lapse, star trails and single shot nightscape images with off the shelf Sony mirrorless cameras. I have selected a variety of my deep sky images and incorporated them into a video along with time lapse clips and star trail pictures. To try and tie it all in together I have used single shot nightscape images and processed the deep sky images to zoom out from the nightscape image from the position that they are actually in the sky for the time that the image was taken, this took a fair bit of time to get just about right. The video is just over 26 minutes long and doesn't include every image or time lapse that I have done as it would double the length of the video. I chose clips and images that I have taken over the last decade. The music is all by a musician called Caleb Etheridge which was obtained from a website called "Artlist" where I'm a subscriber. The music was chosen for this video as all the titles of the tracks are in some way space or sky related. The deep sky images were all taken from my back yard in Hereford and the time lapse and star trail work was taken in the Brecon Beacons, Heargest Ridge and mainly in North Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Dales. The video can be seen at the link below in HD and 4K, please be patient as it may take a while for the HD and 4K versions to appear, it is a 14GB file https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsby_6Mxnk