Northern and Southern Star Trails at Nambucca Heads

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

These images were taken from Nambucca Heads on the 28th and 29th June, 2008. We're here for Planetary Imaging, but I had the other laptop with the Canon 350D on a tripod to take images of star trails all night long.

Controlled and captured via ImagesPlus, converted to TIF and then stacked using StarTrails.de.

The Northern Star Trails were taken on the 28th June, and consists of 36 x 10 minute exposures (6 hours all up), at ISO200. 1 dark frame subtracted from each. The moon rose during the last 90 minutes which lit up the foreground a bit more. The worst light pollution in the north is from Coffs Harbour.

The Southern Star Trails were taken on the 29th June, and consists of 46 x 10 minute exposure (7.66 hours all up), at ISO200. 1 dark frame subtracted from each.

The sky is nice and dark here and it's such a beautiful spot. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I would've preferred some nice foreground interest in the southern one, but there's street lights here that I had to avoid and I couldn't go too far away cause I needed power. A wider angle lens would've been nice too.

1200px wide versions can be loaded from my gallery:
Northern Star Trails
Southern Circumpolar Star Trails

Anyway, thanks for looking.

[RB (Andrew)]

That's fantastic Mike !!!

Great work, those dark skies really yield nice contrast in the trail.

Love the picturesque view in the northern shot.

[Martin Pugh]

Fun stuff Mike and nicely done.

what's the longest exposure you can go to with the Canon 350D before noise becomes objectionable?

cheers
Martin

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Fantastic trails Mike! Well done!

Cheers,
Stephen

[Garyh]

Very Well done Mike!
I really like that Northern one!
Nice foreground!

[gregbradley]

Wonderful northern image. Very arty!

Greg.

[Phil]

great stuff Mike love the shots.
Phil

[Matty P (Matt)]

Beautiful shots Mike, very well done.

[AlexN]

awesome pics Mike! star trails are awesome..

What program do you use to stack images for star trails... I've never done them before but am keen to do so....

[renormalised (Carl)]

Great trails, Mike

The last shot looks like grooves on a vinyl record!!!

[Bloodbean (Troy)]

What did you use to keep the camera powered? Love the shots!

Troy

[jase (Jason)]

Dang Mike! - You're a bit late for the CWAS entry considering the theme this year is star trails. Lovely work indeed. Looks like Nambucca was productive. Please show us more from your imaging fest when you get a chance.

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Originally Posted by RB

That's fantastic Mike !!!

Great work, those dark skies really yield nice contrast in the trail.

Love the picturesque view in the northern shot.

Thanks RB. I wanted a lovely foreground for the southern shot too but cabins and street lights meant I had to choose a spot that at least blocked them out. I did find a nice spot down a track towards the beach, but it was 50m down a track and dragging a long extension lead plus leaving the laptop + camera in the middle of the bush unattended didn't sound like a great idea

Originally Posted by Martin Pugh

Fun stuff Mike and nicely done.

what's the longest exposure you can go to with the Canon 350D before noise becomes objectionable?

cheers
Martin

Thanks Martin. At ISO800, about 4 minutes without ICNR. These were at ISO200 so the noise is still very low even at 10min exposures. I used 1 dark frame to get rid of the hot pixels which are in the same spot in every image.

Originally Posted by AlexN

awesome pics Mike! star trails are awesome..

What program do you use to stack images for star trails... I've never done them before but am keen to do so....

Thanks Alex. Check out www.startrails.de Couldn't be easier to use.

Originally Posted by renormalised

Great trails, Mike

The last shot looks like grooves on a vinyl record!!!

Thanks I think it looks like entering a vortex

Originally Posted by Bloodbean

What did you use to keep the camera powered? Love the shots!

Troy

Thanks Troy. I use an AC Adapter on the 350D to keep it powered all night long. I have the laptop setup on a table next to the camera on the tripod, and use ImagesPlus to program the run.
The images are downloaded straight to the camera after each exposure.

For the north shots, there's a larger gap between exposures because of the way I programmed the shots (delay + converting RAW to jpeg to display). The next day for the southern shots, I reduced all the delays and turned off displaying the image so there's only a tiny gap between the exposures.

Originally Posted by jase

Dang Mike! - You're a bit late for the CWAS entry considering the theme this year is star trails. Lovely work indeed. Looks like Nambucca was productive. Please show us more from your imaging fest when you get a chance.

Thanks Jase - I really wanted to produce some star trail images like this in time for the CWAS competition but things conspired against me and I never got a chance. Nevermind, I still love these type of shots and with my light pollution at home I don't often get a chance so am happy to take the opportunity to do them now from this lovely location.

Got lots of data from the week so far and still a couple of days to go. Will post more as I get time to process it.

[Kirkus (Kirk)]

Those are so nice! I'm assuming in the North star trail that the smallest semi circle in the middle is Polaris? This would show how far off true Polar North it is.

Very cool!

[Deeno]

They look great!!
Must try that program

[Tamtarn]

Enjoyed both Mike our favourite is the Northern.

[h0ughy (David)]

great work you lucky bar stool!! Fancy being given permission to go astroimaging all week when it is clear and dark!!

[Jen]

Nice pics Mike

[sjastro]

Very nice Mike.

Steven

[skeltz (Rob)]

Great images mike and well framed as well