Star trails over my observatory

[Quark]

Hi All,
Had my first attempt last night with my 450D on stellar targets albeit star trails.

I really had not much of an idea about doing this and must thank "Matty".
The star trail image he posted from his back yard gave me some clues as to a staring point.

This image is 200 subs at 30 seconds, I also took 10 Darks at 30 seconds.
I used my EFS 17-85mm lens at 17mm set the 450D at F4 and 400 ASA.

I live on the Northern outskirts of Broken Hill so to image the SCP region I am looking back over the light glow of the town. I think this image demonstrates just how little light glow there is.

I am on a corner block and one car came by early on in this sequence. It illuminated the side of my observatory and part of the tree beside it but I think it actually adds to the image.

Regards
Trevor

[h0ughy]

nice shot - did you use startrails to put it together?

[Quark]

Thanks Houghy,

Yes I used Startrails to put together the image. This was the first time that I have used the "Startrails" software and I found it to be an excellent application and most user friendly.

Regards
Trevor

[Ric]

Very nicely done Trevor, it's lovely and dark out your way by the looks of it.

Cheers

[Matty P]

Nice work Trevor, great star trails. Looks like a fantastic location. :)

Did you run the image through Photoshop? I think a quick curves adjustment would really help this image.

Well done. :thumbsup:

[Quark]

Hi Matty,

I have not done anything with it yet, thanks for the advice, will have a play with it. This really is a bit of a learning curve for me.

Regards
Trevor

[Kevnool]

Nice Trevor , I knew it wouldnt be long before you done it......cheers Kev.

[kinetic]

Hi Trev,

Hope you don't mind, I did a few quick histo adjustments,
your image is beautiful.
Lots of stars!
Your 185k posted image seems to have lots of JPEG type artifacts,
I'd suspect working on the original would work even better:)

Full screen view looks amazing.......homesick!

PS: your weather vane is not pointing south mate :)

regards,
Steve

[iceman]

Nice work Trevor.

With large images from the DSLR, before saving them as jpeg, you need to resize them to something like 800 or 1024px wide. That will then enable you to save it as jpeg under 200kb without getting the compression artifacts.

Lovely image.

[Quark]

Thanks Steve,
I have a lot to learn with using the DSLR, I can see lots of trial and error in front of me.

Regards
Trevor

[Quark]

Thanks for the the advice Mike, as I told Steve I have a lot to learn with my DSLR.

Regards
Trevor

[h0ughy]

have another go at it Trevor, you only learn through making mistakes (LOL or watching others make them so that i can perfect the art of doing it).

[Quark]

Ok, so I reduced the size of the original file and then saved it as a jpg.

I think this should look better.

Regards
Trevor