Into the Stella Valles rode the 600

Quite a while ago I posted a technique on eliminating/reducing star trails in your night shots. And now I have found another, perhaps easier way to make this calculation, at least for safety. This is called the "Rule of 600".

Basically you take your true lens focal length (on a 2/3 sensor you multiply by 1.6, eg 18mm x 1.6 = 28.8mm) and then divide 600 by that focal length .. this will return you the longest exposure that is possible for any given focal length lens, without the stars streaking.

So, using the 18mm Lens, that would return 600/28.8 = 20.833 seconds before trails show up.

The plan? The plan is victory!

Just come back from the moonrise on Martins Bay .. and yes, the plan was victory!  usual focus issues, star trail issues and almost losing my glasses, not to mention the tide chasing me up the beach ... but DAMN it was worth it ....

Here's a taster, more to come!

Check out Antares!

w00t!  Watch this space!

Bright Lights, Small Town

Valhallen isn't the only astro-photography nut around here, although that's scarcely a coincidence. Until the Beast is up and on it's 3 feet, I'll have to content myself with long exposure fun with the 300D we rescued. Hmm, bit of a theme here, fixing up broken and neglected optics! Speaking of which, have a 350D on the way which will be a major mission to fix, but I digress.

Last night featured a gorgeous moon halo, and a very bright Venus, so without further rambling, some pics...

22Don300D

Venus Tree

A little noisy, but i like them. Now to figure out how to insert pictures; just getting the links in right was a mission :)

Walking the trails ...

While I have been kinda obsessed with astro-photography of late, only through the camera until I can afford a t-mount of course :)  I have till been sniffing around the Flickr groups and the net in general re: Startrails.  In doing so, I found this:  http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

Looks pretty simple, so will try it and let you know how it goes eh?

Been thinking I might do a kit post soon, not done one of them for a while :D

For photographers, and a welcome

Welcome to the blog Bill!  Thanks for the awesome first post, although we will never speak of astrology again thank you!!!

In other news, Bill put me onto an awesome website today for calculating how long an exposure you can use before you start to get star trails .. this is awesome for photographers to know, so I decided to post some of the more common southerb stars here, with their declinations, for my not-so-astronomical friends who look at me funny when I say "declination."  Declination is of course how far a star is from the celestial equator :)

So go here: http://www.galacticfool.com/calculate-star-trails/

and here are the stars!!!


Southern Cross
Acrux -63.1575
Gacrux -57.1717

Orion
Anilam (middle star of the belt) -1.1958
Betelgeuse 7.4083

Aldebaran 16.5303
Canopus -52.7019
Sirius -16.7286
Formalhault -29.5656
Archenar -57.1831
Antares -26.4547
Vega 38.7936

these are all pulled from Stellarium, which you can get from http://www.stellarium.org/

And lastly, how to find the south pole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_pole#Finding_the_south_celestial_pole

The reason I'm working around to this is of course my latest few shots, which feature quite rich and not-too-streaky star fields.  This prompted some questions from fellow photo-bunnies, and well here it is :)  Weather looks like poo for the next week or so, which is a pity as there is a beautiful clustering of the moon and several planets tonight ... damn you clouds!

dSLRtrails .. the first go

Here's the first results from using the SLR for some startrails, on bulb setting, with new remote ...

Started off at 12 minutes ...

Then bit the bullet and went to 97 minutes .. during which, my flatmate came home in her car ... so this one is quite heavily treated in PS to pull out the details ...

Stars Over Snells Beach

Stars Over Snells Beach
Originally uploaded by chickinthepark1

Went out to test the 20D tonight, was an awesomely clear night but I had power problems with the camera, which kinda sucked. The laptop worked fine, but I only got 25 shots in before the camera died. So this is the best of those.

30second exposure, Apeture f/3.5, ISO 400

Once more unto the Waikato

Jax and I are on "holiday" at the moment in Te Awamutu, which is, as usual, an awesome break.  So while I do have the 'scope with me, the opportunities for observing have been slight.  Either I have been too tired, or the clouds have chased me down here, which they have.

Still, tonight may be a good one, we will see.

Yesterday Jax and I went walking out and around TA, and we challenged each other to a photographic scavenger hunt - where we each wrote a list of things for the other person to find and photograph.  On the list she made me was ... space :)  Of course it was then cloudy as until quite late, as it is wont to do when I need clear skies.

So here's my "space" photo - with thanks to my niece Emily for the props :)

And if anyone is interested in the results of the scavenger hunt, you can find them here.

Rising Stars

Good evening all .. and of course, Happy Holidays

I got an awesome script running for CHDK tonight .. my first timelapse.  CHDK is allowing me to make basically 8 megapixel movies of the stars moving around, using photographic settings :)

I has a happy! Here's why:  http://www.vimeo.com/8367629

The video is shot here in Te Awamutu facing roughly south-wards .. you can see the Southern Cross (Crux Australis) rising across the top left hand corner - real Kiwi Icon :)  I'm obviously needing things like better ISO settings and exposure control, but for a first time, I'm pretty happy with this.  My goal in this is to get a really good looking timelapse ... including the milky way if possible ...

As we draw near the end of the International Year of Astronomy, and the first 2 months of my astro-blog I'm thinking that this photography thing is way more complicated than I originally thought of.  Also, am looking forward to the next 5 years or so - New Horizons gets to Pluto in July 2015 - now that's going to be cool!   NASA has the Kepler project well underway .. looking for Earth-like planets around other stars and there's lot and lots of beautiful things to look at.

As for the blog, I have tried to keep it focussed on the sky, and my attempts to photograph it.  Hope you've enjoyed it so far.

Hope your holidays go well and you have a good time now and in the new year!!