Friday, September 13, 2013

Star Trails & the Milky Way

A few months ago, I was blessed to be able to meet up with a photographer I knew from Instagram who offered to give a free workshop on Star Trails. Of course, I jumped at the chance and Michael drove me up to Noosa for the workshop.

We arrived an hour before sunset to walk to Teatree Bay & set up so we could begin shooting about an hour after sunset. It's important to do star trails on a night with no moon and away from city lights.

Firstly shooting towards the north east, I shot a series of 79 consecutive 30 second exposures. Shooting in this directing gives you a semi circular rain effect.
I did minor editing in Lightroom 4 on each image and then stacked them using a free program called Star Stax.

Look below the headland... the iridescent blue glow on the water is Bio-luminescent Plankton.

Next I shot south (60 x 30 sec exposures) which results in a circular star trail effect. I even managed to capture a couple of shooting stars. Can you spot them??

Next, and just before we left, I took a "Milky Way" shot. A single 15 second exposure facing south.

It was a great night!!

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Skywatch Friday          

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

dat is wel heel mooi gedaan,heel leuk.

Buttons Thoughts said...

Oh that had to be an incredible night. Beautiful is all I can say. We are blessed to live in a very dark area so the stars shine bright. You have peaked my interest now:) Awesome. hug B

TexWisGirl said...

really wonderful, liz!

eileeninmd said...

Amazing sky captures! The stars and I love the Milky Way shot! Have a great weekend!

leanne can blog said...

these are beautiful!

Lisa Gordon said...

Oh my goodness, these are amazingly beautiful, Liz!

Carole M. said...

now that was some gift, and your prize when you got to see them on your monitor like this must've been amazing. I'm not sure I wouldn've slept that night! Does the actual 'stacking' of the images take long? Excellent results Liz

Grandma Barb's This and That said...

Those are incredible photos of the stars and the milky way!

Joop Zand said...

WOW.....these are all very nice Liz....compliments.

Greetings, Joop

http://joopzandfotografie.blogspot.nl

Amazing wonders in my life said...

Wow.... Never seen like this before...

Karen @ Pieces of Contentment said...

Wow, each of these is stunning! What an amazing experience and result.

Graham Edwards said...

Very impressive. I've tried some star shots in NZ but never tried sequencing shots. Having seen your results I may give it a go this summer when I'm back.

Pat Tillett said...

BEAUTIFUL! I need to get myself a tripod and experiment. I'd love to get shots like this.

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