With last night actually being clear and (almost) cloud free I thought I'd have a go at taking some star shots. Unfortunately the moon was pretty bright so I didn't get quite the dark skies I wanted.
The bright spot lower left is Venus.
The bright red tree is due to the brake lights of our neighbour's car about 100m away! The trail of dots at top right is a plane heading to LBA. Spot the constellation?
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
whitestone wrote: ↑Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:36 am
The trail of dots at top right is a plane heading to LBA.
I'm a bit confused by this If it's a long exposure then wouldn't it be a line of light? And if it's a short exposure it would be a single dot?
Could it be the Space X Starlink satellites? I have seen them from the Island on a bivi. Once they are all up it's probably all well be able to see in the night sky They are planning on putting up 12,000.
I think it's the plane's navigation lights Sean, they blink so would appear as a series of dots. In some of the other shots there's a plane going away from me and the trace appears as a line but if you zoom in you can see it's really a sequence of flashes of light. Unless the Starlink satellites rotate then they'd appear as a straight line. Also I took the shots at 2130 so the sun would be well below the horizon (by about 50degs) so unlikely to be lighting up low earth satellites.
Constellation? It's the Plough, Ursa Major. Follow the plane "dots' and you come to a pair of brighter stars almost in the centre of the shot - those are the two stars away from the plough's handle, the constellation is hanging down from those. Polaris is the bright star just inward of the left hand edge of the shot. Something I've noticed with starscapes is that they reveal an awful lot more stars than we are accustomed to using the naked eye so picking out the constellations becomes hard work.
For a compact camera (Sony rx100) and my first attempt they aren't that bad. Exposure was about 15 seconds at f2.0 and ISO 6400. At least with digital you can play around with things and experiment quickly.
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
Ahh, a blinking light with a long exposure, obvious now
When I saw the satellites I had no idea what they were at the time, they passed overhead as a line of dots, equally spaced. It was only a few weeks later I heard about them by chance and the penny dropped.
Went out for a run last night. It was sub standard, I was puffing like some knackered thing and there was no way I was in a state to enjoy the countryside / view. Well, not until I gave up and walked / stretched but it was dark by then