First attempt @ startrails

[Sam Bo]

Hi all

First attempt at star trails around Polaris last night. Sky was not totally dark due to moon but was surprised to see how blue the sky came out and also how green the leaves on a tree were despite it being 23:00!

Stopped aperture down to F5.6 with ISO @ 100. 20 minute exposure

Sam

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Pretty cool that nice

[Ant]

Very nice I love star trail shots!

Don't forget that even at this time of year it is still light at 11pm. For me (peterborough) it's not dark tonight till 11:30 - and your further north than me.

Try taking shorter exposures and then combining for the finished effect.

http://startrails.de/ is a cracking bit of software for startrails, I use it for all my startrails and got

My dSLR is an old 300D and takes almost 10 seconds to save to the CF card, that's why there is small gaps in the trails. If your camera is newer then the end result will be much smoother.

Cheers

Ant

[Digz]

Great start. I particularly like the foreground interest, although next time I would try and get the tree off centre. Also, when it gets darker, try using shorter exposures and stacking them as Ant suggest and on one of your last frames use a torch to illuminate any foreground features you want to accentuate.

[saturn5]

I've started using Starstax software instead of Startrails.de.

Pretty much the same but i prefer the starstax layout and there are a couple of extras it does as well.

http://markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX/StarStaX.html

[Sam Bo]

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. Lots of fun ideas to try out!

Sam

[Zul]

Nice shot!