Star Trail from New Forest

[daemon]

Here is a star trails image from 20th January with a tree outside my house on the edge of the New Forest. South Coast UK.

I think it looks a little artificial and maybe I'll benefit from using a new wider angle lens (which arrived today) in order to capture more landscape.

Criticism and comment welcome. Here are some further details:-

• Nikon D5300 with stock 18-55mm lens at F3.5 - ISO 1600
• 108 x 30s Lights
• 30 x Darks
• 30 x Flats
• Stacked in Sequator.
• Lightly processed in GIMP

Regards,

Steve

 

[daemon]

Here is a re-stack and rotation of my original image. Slightly better I think.

[GraemeC]

Great picture! Interesting how the trails appear to have a bright end and a faint end.you seem to have done a lot of processing and taken multiple shots.... Do you know how it would compare with 1 X 20minute exposure?

 

[daemon]

3 hours ago, GraemeC said:

Great picture! Interesting how the trails appear to have a bright end and a faint end.you seem to have done a lot of processing and taken multiple shots.... Do you know how it would compare with 1 X 20minute exposure?

 

Thanks Graeme! I'm glad you pointed out the changed nature of the trails compared to the first picture - this was the effect I was trying to achieve, having seen it used to nice effect on other people's star trail pictures. I think that this was achieved by ticking the "Motion Effect" checkbox in the "Composition" menu of Sequator prior to stacking. I think it gives more of a dynamic effect.

This second image actually had no processing done to it! I did not even load it into the GIMP after stacking the second image! It is straight as it came out of Sequator. I did take a lot of lights, darks and flats so maybe that has helped, although I realise that I do still have some vignetting in the corners (especially with the tree) so maybe I'll fix that later.

As for a comparison with a single long exposure, I would caution against that. You are much more likely to encounter jet or satellite trails leaving the shutter open for so long and waste all that time. If you take many short subs then you reduce the risk of having to throw away long exposures. I took 120 x 30" subs for the light frames and had to discard 12 of them due to satellite streaks and planes flying over. So I got a pretty good percentage. Just taking 3 x 20 min shots would have been a big risk - not to mention the chances of worse exposure and light pollution issues.

Clear skies!

Steve