Tag: Star Trails

Three-Years Ago (25-February-2008) — Colorado

Elderhostel “Photography in the Southwest” Workshop Day 1. Star Trails.

The following image is a composite of five 30 minute night sky exposures taken during a Elderhostel/Road Scholar photography workshop at Kelly Place outside of Cortez, Colorado in 2008. It was really dark other than the Christmas lights at the main building, and you could see a lot of stars in the sky. I moved the tripod as far away from the lights as possible and decided to do this series with a fisheye lens that would give a 180° field of view. The five images were combined using Startrails. This program is old (only works with jpg or 8-bit tif files) but works better than when I try to merge the images as layers in Photoshop.

Winter night sky looking north at Kelley's Place near Cortez, Colorado. Composite of four images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, 16 mm, f/2.8, 30 min). (David J Mathre)
Winter night sky looking north at Kelley’s Place near Cortez, Colorado. Composite of four images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, 16 mm, f/2.8, 30 min). (David J Mathre)



Individual images in this slide show can be viewed here.

Friday (12-November-2010) — New Jersey

Backyard Autumn Nighttime Sky over New Jersey.

  1. Star trail composite of ~180 images (3 hours) taken last night looking south from my home in New Jersey. Each image was acquired with a Nikon D3x camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO 100, f/8, 59 sec). Images converted to jpg with Capture NX2, then combined using the startrails.exe program.
  2.  Star trail composite of ~300 images 5 hours) taken last night looking south from my home in New Jersey. Each image was acquired with a Nikon D3x camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO 100, f/8, 59 sec). Images converted to jpg with Capture NX2, then combined using the Startrails program. Since this was later, fewer jet trails.
  3. Waxing Crescent Moon image acquired with a Nikon D3s camera and Questar 7″ telescope (ISO 200, ~ 1600 mm, f/16, 1/50 sec).
Star Trails and Jet Traffic over New Jersey (David J Mathre)
Star Trails and Jet Traffic over New Jersey (David J Mathre)
Star Trails over New Jersey (David J Mathre)
Star Trails over New Jersey (David J Mathre)
Waxing Crescent Moon. Image taken with Nikon D3s and 400 mm f/2.8 lens with TC-E 2.0 teleconverter (ISO 200, 800 mm f/8, 1/100 sec) (David J Mathre)
Waxing Crescent Moon. Image taken with Nikon D3s camera and 400 mm f/2.8 lens with TC-E 2.0 teleconverter (ISO 200, 800 mm f/8, 1/100 sec) (David J Mathre)

Friday (11-December-2009) — New Jersey

Late Autumn Night Sky Over New Jersey: Star Trails and Time-lapse Video.

Images of star and jet trails plus a time-lapsed video looking south from my house in New Jersey. This was a couple of days before the Geminid meteor shower was supposed to peak, but I did catch a few meteors during the night.  A series of images were taken with a Nikon D3x and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 400, f/4, 30 sec). The star trail images are composites of 120 images combined with the Startrails program. A time-lapsed video of the entire set was also created using Adobe Photoshop CS5 export to video. When you see Orion, tell me what I did wrong…

Late Fall Night Sky Image of Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 400, f/4.0, 30 sec). Composite of 120 images over 1 hour combined with Startrails program. Hour 2. (David J Mathre)
Late Fall Night Sky Image of Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 400, f/4.0, 30 sec). Composite of 120 images over 1 hour combined with Startrails program. Hour 2. (David J Mathre)