Minions, late Orionids, rogues and Roadford...

[John Baker]

I have wanted to do an astro shoot at Minions on Bodmin Moor for a long time, last night there was an opportunity to visit the site and I was rewarded with some great views as well as some rogue meteors, possibly some are from the Orionids.

I started the evening at the Roadford Reservoir to shoot the large chrome Diamond Jubilee Sundial, the moon was very bright in the sky, but the location was grand and there were some great streaks in the sky...

 

I then moved up to Minions on Bodmin Moor.  The first shot is Wheal Phoenix with the Pleiades (M45) overhead, I then started the trek over the moor to find the Cheesewring, rock stacks...

I have walked to the Cheesewring many times, intersting how in the dark it seems a lot further.  Close to Minions is the very large Caradon Hill TV mast which is equiped with a number of very bright red lights which casts its glow a long way...

This is the rock stack known as the Cheesewring...

This is another stack, facing North

A different angle...

The area has a number of old tin/copper mines, I then went down  to South Phoenix Mine

This is always fun to do, a shot from the engine house, looking up, with a section of the Milky Way framed

The final shoot was at the  large neolithic Trethevy Quoit, this is a 2.9m structure dating from approximately 3500 BC, again it is luminated by the red light pollution from the Caradon Hill TV mast

A final shot, meteor, Milky Way and Quoit

I have wanted to do this shoot for a couple of years, I was so pleased when I was finally able to get all the element togehter - all images shot on my trusty 1Dx with my 15-30mm Tamron f2.8 lens.

This is a small selecton from 150 images shot on the night, happy to add details if you interested

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Scooot]

That’s a lovely set of images, I can’t even pick out a favourite.Must have been a lovely walk.  

[John Baker]

36 minutes ago, Scooot said:

That’s a lovely set of images, I can’t even pick out a favourite.Must have been a lovely walk.  

 I was out for 8 hours, I was so physically tired at the end I could barely walk  the area of the Cheesewring is surrounded  by a large rock field, behind the stack is a deep quarry, hence the wire fences, so it makes walking at night interesting - it was my first time out for a couple of months, so was all the nicer to get these...