When the conditions are right, you can see the Milky Way in New Jersey. Two views, a 5 minute and 15 minute exposure.
Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 300 sec). (David J Mathre)Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 900 sec). (David J Mathre)
I am back in New Jersey after a short trip to San Francisco. I hate flying and this trip was bad. I spent 4 hours in the plane before taking off in Philadelphia (we did get back to the gate for a short stop to avoid the 3 hour federal regulation rules). Ultimately it took 12 hours from the time I left my office to get to the hotel in San Francisco. I hate flying, and would rather drive. For the return flight, the airline decided there were too many empty seats and substituted a smaller plane (and bumped 20+ passengers). ARRG! I just wanted to get home, and was not interested in a $400 future credit. Ultimately I got a seat on the original flight. It was a middle seat, and I had to force the armrest down to separate me from the over sized person next to me oozing into my seat. I hate flying. I hate flying. I hate flying.
Star Trails. Following Hurricane Irene, we had a couple of days and nights with very clear skies. You could even see the Milky Way (although a lot dimmer than in locations with less light pollution). I set up a Nikon D3s camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens to do star trails last night. The settings on the camera were manual (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, bulb). The exposure time was controlled with a MC-36 itervelometer (delay 5 sec, long 59 sec, interval 1 sec, N —). In camera long exposure noise reduction was turned off. The 1 second interval is required to allow the data to get transferred from the camera to the card, and effectively have one image taken every 60 seconds (1 minute). The MC-36 is required for exposures longer than 30 seconds. After the images were transferred to the computer, the RAW images were processed with Lightroom, and converted to JPG. The JPG images were then processed using Startrails.exe program to make composites. The following images show a single exposure, then startrail composites of 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes, and 300 minutes. Some high level clouds came in for the 300 minute (5 hour) image.
North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Single image before using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 2 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 5 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 15 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 30 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 60 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 120 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 300 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)
I used the images taken overnight to create a time-lapse video of the night sky. Although faint, you can see the Milky Way in New Jersey. The time-lapse video was created using Adobe PhotoShop CS5 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
Star Trails and Lens Distortion. One problem I had with the star trail image I just published was that the circles looking toward the north star were not exactly round. This is probably due to the non-linear distortions characteristics of wide-angle lenses, especially toward the edges. There is a program, DxO Optics Pro that corrects for distortion of various cameras and lenses. (Note that the current version of Adobe Camera Raw also does lens corrections for some camera/lens pairs, but not for the Nikon D3s camera and 24 mm f/1.4G lens used for this image). I used the DxO Optics program to process and correct the 328 images. It took over 12 hours for DxO to process all of these images.I then ran the reprocessed images with startrails.exe program. Let me know (comment, or send me an e-mail) if you think the resultant image looks better, no different, or worse.
North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Images taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 1/30 sec). Raw image processed including Nikon 24 mm f/1.4G Lens Correction with DxO Pro. Composite of 328 images combined with StarTrails Program.
Going from sunspots to startrails. The view is from my back deck over the roof. A tree in my front yard just blocks the north star. The image is a composite of 326 30-second exposures combined using the Startrails program. There are at least four jet trails, and a couple of meteor trails. The meteor trails are too faint in the composite, so I included a crop from a single image showing a meteor trail. I’ve also added a version of the startrails in B&W, converted using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Composite of 326 images combined using the Startrails program.Meteor Trail. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, Nik Define, and Photoshop CS5North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Composite of 326 images combined using the Startrails program. Converted to B/W with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
