Air traffic & star trails

[Andrew*]

I had two failed attempts at a star trail image in the past week - this is a third-time-lucky. The first time, clouds came over on the FIRST 3-minute frame! The second time, the vertical column on the tripod wasn't locked properly and it sank down during the exposures...

Finally I got it right on Wednesday night and here's the result.

Shown is flight traffic coming into Aberdeen airport on the other side of the city. In the foreground, lots of wood: silver birches and Sequoias, a wood-store and a wood workshop.

Jupiter is the bright trail and the constellations include Pisces, Pegasus, Aries and Andromeda.

Camera: Canon 450D with Sigma 17-70mm lens at f/4

Exposure: 2.5 hours of 3-minute exposures

Processing: Stacked in StarTrails, post processing in PS CS3

Andrew

[simon84]

Lovely image Andrew, the trees look fantastic with a lovely mix of trails. It really gives a feel of the world rushing by whilst you step back and watch from a distance.

[astroimpulse]

Yeh...it's awesome. The trees look unreal. And like Simon says; it feels like the world is rushing by.

10/10

[JonH]

Cool shot, it really does look very busy up there!

[rabbithutch]

Beautiful, thought provoking, image, Andrew!

Brilliantly done ! ! ! !

That's an image that would have been nearly impossible to make without super imposing not-quite-registered images from silver film.

Thanks for sharing it.

[poltabs]

Very nice image there Andrew,I think I will have to try a star trails shot at some point!

Cheers

Kevin

[lukebl]

Magnificent image. Nice spot you have there.

[Andrew*]

Thanks for the nice comments folk!

Yes, digital has big advantages when it comes to star trails because you can keep the exposure down. Of course there's always the problem with gaps between the stars... Also, by taking lots of short exposures in digital, all is not lost when a bank of clouds comes over in the last 10 minutes!!

Andrew

[Photosbykev]

It's nice not to see any significant light pollution from the 3 minute exposures, I rarely get over 30 seconds without pollution becoming a problem. The long exposure really makes the foreground jump out of the picture using ambient light rather than light painting or flash illumination. Using 3 minute exposures also reducing the post processing time considerably, last star trail I did had 2000+ 10 second exposures over 6 hours lol. Personally I think it would look better if it was slightly darker but that might be an illusion as I'm viewing it on an uncalibrated laptop at the moment.

[dogfish]

Andrew,

Very moody and atmospheric with an interesting (sort of spooky) setting.

Good stuff.

Martin

[Andrew*]

Photosbykev, Thanks for the comments. Yes, I think you're right that it looks better darker. Quick bit of curves and I think it's an improvement.

Re: light pollution - I have done my best trying to keep it to a minimum, by pointing to the S away from Aberdeen's skyglow, and through colour-balancing in Photoshop. It is a bit orange on the individual subs, but the site has a limiting magnitude of around 5.0.

Andrew

[simon84]

Really like the new darker version Andrew. Very atmospheric. Looking forward to getting my new Red Snapper tripod so I can get out there and do some of this, my current tripod has unfortunatlely now passed on.......