![]() Subscribers receive regular invites to PhotoPills masterclasses covering techniques, and how to plan for upcoming astronomical events. The Photopills YouTube channel is very helpful too, it has great video tutorials and documents free to download for all types of astrophotography photo shoots. It also includes a virtual reality view for any given date, which is especially useful if you ever want to do Milky Way, Astro, Moon or Sun photography. For this, I use the Photopills app, one of the best free apps I’ve found for astrophotography. This image was created by stacking 350 images taken at 30sec/photo, f/2.8, ISO 800 When is the right time to shoot star trails?įor star trails, the best time is when there is a new moon because you need to avoid a full or bright moon. The photos were then stacked to create the final scene.ĭuring lockdown, I practised this technique in my own back garden. The Silchester Star Trails photo (above) took a lot of planning and waiting for the perfect, clear, moon-free night as I needed at least two hours to take all 162 photos that make up the final image, some of which were light painted (paths and church windows) by using selective light painting. Another thing I needed to know was how bright the moon might be. This helped me see in advance which nights and times the sky might be clear enough to venture out. To help plan an evening window of opportunity, another app I used is Clear Outside. Waiting for the right conditions Deciding when to spend an evening out taking photos is probably the hardest piece of the process as weather conditions and moon visibility change every day.įinding the right conditions can take days, weeks or even months. I took a few test shots and from these, I got a rough idea of the best location. ![]() The interval between photos is 2 seconds. Star trails over Silchester Church, Silchester, Hampshire. Once I knew the location of Polaris, I had to find a good spot to set up my camera, one that gave me both a good view of the church and the open sky. This will pretty much be the same position day or night at any time during the year. Then simply move the phone and follow the arrow on the screen until the app shows the location of the star in the sky, in my case Polaris. Using this app, you can enter a star name in the search bar, select it from the results and then select ‘Directions always above horizon’. The one I use on my iPhone is called Night Sky. Luckily, these days you can find apps for your phone to help with almost anything. I walk around Silchester nearly every day with my dog, Bob, and had walked through the churchyard many times.Īs my main goal was the alignment of Polaris with the top of the church spire’s weathervane ‘golden fish’, the first thing I had to know was the location of Polaris. At the time Christmas was coming up, the idea was to create an image of the church spire with Polaris aligned as close as possible to the spire and then capture the rotating star trails with as much colour as possible. The first and most important thing I had to decide on was a location. ![]() Discover the right way to capture them in all their celestial splendour, with a bit of light painting, following Duncan Wallace‘s easy guide.
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