January 17, 2010

Southern Skies


Southern Skies
Originally uploaded by chickinthepark1

Ok, so here's last night's timelapse. Couple of things here - I finally found somewhere really dark to do this, and it's awesome to have some darkness. Second thing is that I am really starting to think that my camera (Canon IXUS 80IS) has too small an aperture to do this kind of thing justice. I haven't done all the tests I need to yet, but it's starting to feel that way.

This was shot on an 8s exposure (too long - stars have trails, esp Alpha and Beta Centauri there) one shot every 20 seconds, then time-mapped in AfterEffects by a factor of about 2.5.

There's another one (here) that shows the sunset before the stars really came out.

PS: chickinthepark1 is the name of the Flickr Pro account that Jax and I share - the way to tell whose photos are whose is to look for the "Val" in the tags :)

2 comments:

gfkBill said...

Real nice! Such a shame we don't have a pole star down here :(
Ooh, I'm gonna be out in the middle of nowhere down in Rotorua, dark, Dark, DARK. I may just have to pack my 'scope and my camera :D

ValHallen said...

Do it!!! Timelapses and Observation report expected on your return!