Star Trails- From Sydney

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

After advice from Eric about doing Star Trails, I managed to capture about 90 frames at 30 seconds.

Then my battery went flat. Time for a dc adapter.

Air traffic was a bit heavy!! That was three planes.

I did however grab two pieces, of space junk burning up...
They are running parallel, made me think a stacking error..?
But everything else around them, looks good I think.


Thanks for looking!!

[Quark (Trevor)]

Well done Mitchell,

A very nice star trial image, I think the planes give it some character and the meteors must have been reasonably bright to show up, considering the location of your image.

Regards
Trevor

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by Quark

Well done Mitchell,

A very nice star trial image, I think the planes give it some character and the meteors must have been reasonably bright to show up, considering the location of your image.

Regards
Trevor

Thank you very much!!

I am just noticing there are more meteors/space junk.
If you zoom in there is atleast one more in the top left corner.



Edit~ check out these 10x 30 second consecutive stacked frames, two pieces of space junk within a minute. They are coming from different directions.

Edit~ Thought I would load 7x 30 second frames. You can see how close they were.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Co-pilot: "Captain, I can't get a bearing at all with this!!!!"
Captain: "Yeah, looks like everything is going 'round in circles!!!"



Great shot, Mitchell

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

"Arrrrrr, grasshopper. You learn quick, but waste much time in the process"

Well I should have guessed. One of my batteries is not an official Canon battery.

It only lasted an hour.
Had another go with the Canon branded battery.


263 shots x 30 seconds. Couple more peices of space junk, nothing like the first shot though.
Better trails.


In case there is anyone reading, that is still learning and wants to know-
After stacking with "StarMax" (Free download),
I still get tiny gaps in some of the trails. Might be my shutter, because i'm using a remote on continuous mode 30 second frames.

I blew the image up, sampled the colour of the trail and filled the missed pixels, I also removed the blue and red dots using the same method.
I realised, to get a nice pointed end to the tail, finish your run of frames with some shorter ones, eg my last 3 frames were at 15 seconds.

That dims the trails and gives the effect of a pointed tail. Gives them a better resemblance to a "moving" object. IMHO

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by Lumen Miner

263 shots x 30 seconds.......Better trails.

No hint of any gaps!

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by erick

No hint of any gaps!

Thanks mate!! It's amazing what you can do, in Windows xp Paint.
I use it because when you sample, it flicks to the brush automatically, instead of having to select it..Still getting use to Gimp.. I have to purchase Photoshop.


I'm not planning on abusing, my shutter like that much. Just wanted atleast 2 decent shots of trails, to show at a public viewing next week with my scope. I want the kids to have some pictures to look at, if the moon doesn't interest them much.

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

This is still unprocessed. 1 Hour of 30 seconds frames...
Will try the same view, but run it for 2 1/2 hours tonight, if the clouds lift.

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Gave it another shot, with the better battery.

283 frames at 30seconds each.

Clouds came in, nice light show though.

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Taken on- 28/08/09
348 Frames x 25 seconds.


Is that a satellite?

[Hagar (Doug)]

Some really interesting results Mitchell, Must try some trails myself sometime soon.

Looks good

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by Hagar

Some really interesting results Mitchell, Must try some trails myself sometime soon.

Looks good

Thanks!!

These are now just the by-products, of hunting for Space Junk.

They are always a bonus, like this one was last night. I found no Junk in the frames, but t'was a pretty star trail!

[Octane (Humayun)]

You're getting some good results there, Mitchell.

That cloud one is very interesting.

Regards,
Humayun

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by Octane

You're getting some good results there, Mitchell.

That cloud one is very interesting.

Regards,
Humayun

From viewing the individual frames, a number of smallish clouds swept through frame. The moons reflected light illuminated the first of them blueish, as the moon was descending it was casting an orange light., that's the other ones...

Unfortunately the 30 second frames gave a staggerd appearance... But I guess if it wasn't for the short frames, I would have just got opaque cloud and not the individual colours.

Thanks for your comment.