Inner Melbourne Startrails attempt

[doigal]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/3401707378_1ef81c550a.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/doigal/3401707378/)

Hi all! I'm a newbie!

My background is mostly from more earthbased photography, but I've been wanting to expirement with startrails (and astrophotography in general) for years, but just never gotten around to it until now. When I got home tonight, there were enough stars out, even in inner city hawthorn, to give it a crack, and here's the result.

I'm keen to do this properly from a true dark site, but i'm happy with the amount that you can do here given the right conditions.

Does anyone know of any rock solid locations that are within an hour or two's drive from melbourne??

Stacked image, 52x 30second exposures, 26 minute equivilant.

[iceman]

Hi Lachlan

:welcome: to IceInSpace!

That's a good start!

What ISO and f-stop settings did you use? (and what camera?)

[erick]

Hi Lachlan and welcome!

What do you mean by "rock solid"? (Maybe Korumburra residents would have thought they were until the earth moved!)

If you are considering more star trails, you might wish to consider:-

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

I haven't tried it, but it looks promising.

Cheers
Eric

[doigal]

Cheers mate, ISO 100 and around f/4, cant remember off the top of my head!



Just somewhere thats nice and dark, easy to get to, public land, etc.

That program was the one i used to stack it together last night, very easy to use.

[erick]

Depends a bit on from where you are leaving Melbourne - driving right across the city to start and end the night isn't fun.

Now, really nice and dark means more than an hour from the outskirts. However I can tell you three places (south, east and north) that are closer than that, but worth trying. PM me for details.

If you want quite dark, I can recommend Snake Valley Astro Assoc's site. Snake Valley is 20 min south-west of Ballarat. It is on private land and the Assoc charges a small visitor's fee for non-members, but you can set up on a solid concrete slab, secure and safe, and with darker skies than anywhere else I can recommend.

Check out:- http://svaatest.site88.net/

[doigal]

thanks for that eric, i was actually thinking of somewhere around snake valley anyway!