Late April Star Trails

Constellations & Northern Lights

I was looking through my photos I took of the Northern Lights last week and remembered a couple that I shot with my fisheye lens.  I was not happy with these as they were not as sharply focused as I would have liked.  However, this one actually turned out pretty well.  What I like about it is that it has several constellations in it: Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), Cassiopeia, a bit of Perseus, Cepheus, and Draco, and my favorite, albeit faint because of the lighter sky, Camelopardalis (Giraffe).

Northern Lights Star Trails

I shot two star trail sequences last weekend at the cabin.  The one on Friday night captured the very weak Northern Lights glowing red and green on the horizon.  The two photos below show the how dark the sky was and how bright the Northern Lights were.  At the very bottom of the page is a short video of the star motion through the sky and the Northern Lights dancing on the horizon.

Late Summer Star Trails

Milky Way & Moon Movement

Aside from the very short time of really dark skies around the summer solstice when the nights are very brief at higher latitudes, our cabin in the Upper Peninsula has proven to be a great place to take star photos.  It has no light pollution from nearby cities and the Sun and Moon are the only things that cause any real light pollution issues.  This weekend, I had essentially three hours of skies that were dark enough to capture good photographs, as the sunset on the horizon still glowed at midnight and by 3:30am enough sunrise light overexposed my frames to the point that even the dark trees were burnt out of the photos.  Later in the summer and autumn, I should be able to capture some more impressive shots.

The photo above is of the Milky Way rising on the eastern horizon.  You can see a satellite streaking across the right side of the photo.  I stacked about 100 photos shot over a 2-hour period to create the star trail photo below.  I really like this picture because you can see both the upward arc of the stars above the equator and the slight downward arc of those below the equator.

I composed the first video below from the same photos that I used for the star trail photo.  You can see the movement of the Milky Way across the night sky.  The second video shows the movement of the Moon across the sky.  I used my 500mm lens to capture 3 minutes of video, which I sped up to about 30 seconds so that you can see the movement quicker.  Both videos show how fast the Earth spins in a short period of time, motion that seems imperceptible to the naked eye.

Upper Peninsula Night Sky

The night sky at our cabin is fantastic.  As far as I can tell, we have zero light pollution.  Unless the moon has risen, there is no other source of light other than the stars.  I took two long exposure photos on one semi-cloudless night.  The one above is a 20-minute, nonstop exposure.  The hazy section in the middle of the photo is the Milky Way galaxy.  The bottom picture is 4-hour long, multiple photo compilation.  Some clouds blew in later in the evening and you can see them illuminated by the moonrise on the horizon.  I shined a light on the trees to light them for the photo.  I cannot wait for a time when I have clearer skies and a little longer amount of darkness, as this time of year the light from the sunset is still on the horizon at midnight and the it starts getting light around 4:00am!  I also posted a short video of the stars moving through the night sky I composed from all the photos I took to make the second photo.  (If you have fast enough internet speed, you will want to adjust the resolution of the video to high definition using the little gear button on the lower right of the video window.)

No Northern Lights Tonight

Earlier today it looked like the Northern Lights would be visible at even our latitude around Lansing.  About 9:00am, had it been dark, we probably could have seen them quite vividly if I understand the information on the NOAA space weather website.  As the day went by, the strength of the readings went up and down, but by 9:00pm they had diminished considerably.  I think that later tonight much further north people will be able to see them, but I had no luck around here tonight.  I did get a nice photo of the Big Dipper with a satellite streaking across the sky.  Even with a short 60 second exposure, you can see the movement in the stars, which makes them sort of fuzzy.

Starry Sky

This past weekend, my brother-in-law and I spend some time at our new cabin putting up insulation and a gate and also kayaking a bit.  I set up my camera on Friday night and took some long exposure photos of the stars.  The moon was nearly half full, but even that lit up the sky pretty well, so I did not have the darkest environment I would have liked.  The photo above is a 30 minute exposure with the middle of the photo focused on the North Star.  The axis of the earth points in the general direction of the North Star, which remains stationary in the sky while the other stars appear to swirl around it.  I am not completely happy with my first attempt at making a photo like this, as the star "trails" are slightly out of focus.  I attribute that to the dew that started to form on my lens nearly immediately upon starting this experiment.  I hope to have many more chances to try to capture similar photos in the years to come.