I think I missed out on the best of the aurora show, but I got the Milky Way, some horizon-hugging lights, and about 30 minutes’ worth of star trails.
In the dark—Nov. 7, 2026
milky way
Writing Retreat 2026, days 3–5
Let’s see here:
Wednesday
Wednesday was rainy and cool. I did some editing on the paper printout of There’s Nothing Good at the Top, and finished reading Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson and started Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley. I also discovered that Fargo is available to me on the TV, and so I watched the first few episodes of season 1.
Thursday
Thursday was a better day; the sun came out and the temperature cracked the mid-teens. I wore shorts when I walked over to Poor Michael’s book emporium, where I had a mocha and picked up some books for a friend (I have enough books of my own, thanks). Back at the house I entered my edits from the paper manuscript into my document, and made a few more updates. I still need to add a few scenes and update a few dream sequences, I think; make a few things more explicit. The first draft is you telling yourself the story[1]As Sir Terry Pratchett put it., but by the time it’s a second draft (which is what I’m working on) it should be ready for others to read it too.
The sky was still clear after the sun went down, and it’s quite dark ’round these parts, so I set up my cameras in the yard, one facing north and one pointing pretty much straight up. The north-facing one got about 2½ hours worth of 5‑second exposures for star trails (above); the other one snapped a bunch of 30-second exposures of the Milky Way. I made time-lapse videos from both sets of photos.
Friday
That actually bled into Friday; all the photos were taken before I went to bed at about 1am, but all the processing happened today. I’ve also read some more, and I plowed through all of season 1 of Fargo too, which told a taut story.
And now I’m going to have some supper, and then work some more on my editing. Tomorrow I have to be up early, so it’s probably for the best that it’s cloudy and rainy—I’ll be less tempted to try and get more nighttime photos.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | As Sir Terry Pratchett put it. |
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Writing Retreat 2026, day 2
Yesterday I chopped words from a 3350-word story till it was under 2500 words. I read it over today, and it’s still got the heart of the story in it. I’ll give it another look in a few days and see if I’ve missed anything.
Today I read about a dozen chapters in Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson. I’m into the final section and I’m still not sure how this is going to end.
I also continued editing the paper manuscript of There’s Nothing Good at the Top. There are a number of things I need to add in there, and the list is growing. (It’s fine; as they say, writing’s re-writing.)
After supper I headed to Wasagaming to snap a short timelapse of the sunset.
I also got a panorama of the sunset sky.
After that, I continued on to Spruces, where the clouds stayed away from the shots I wanted of the Milky Way.
Back at the house, I set up for some quick star trails (and got a bonus shot of the Big Dipper).
And now it’s just past midnight, and I’m going to go to bed. (That’s one thing about doing this retreat in mid-September rather than July or August; I don’t have to stay up till 1 am to get properly dark skies.)
Update: It appears that, if I’d stayed up another hour or two, I might have caught some horizon-hugging aurora last night. Ah well, so it goes.
My favourite photos, 2025 edition
I took a lot of photos in 2025. Here are some of my favourites, in no particular order.
Continue reading “My favourite photos, 2025 edition”The Galaxy, August 21, 2025
Last night I found myself on Road 81W about half a mile south of Highway 16. I had my camera and my tripod, so I thought, Well, why not? Why not take some shots of the Milky Way?
The header image, above, is a single shot of the galaxy above the prairie horizon.
This is a panoramic photo, nine photos, roughly 3×3, to capture more of the height of the galaxy than I could with any single image.
And this is an 11-image stack of a portion of the galaxy, which hopefully brings out some of the detail better than any single shot could.
Info for Nerds
All images were 30 second exposures at 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200.
I merged[1]Use the “Lighten Only” mode, Pat, for future reference. 10 dark frames into a single “dark master”[2]Sounds Sith, but it ain’t. to eliminate or at least limit hot pixels in the images. The Image Magick command composite {image}.jpg -compose minus_dst {dark-frame}.jpg {image}_cleaned.jpg is how I did the dark frame subtraction.
The aligning and stacking was done with tools from Hugin Panorama Tools[3]Hugin is part of Panorama Tools, apparently. and Image Magick—align_image_stack *.jpg -a aligned_ to align the images, then mogrify -format jpg *.tif to convert the TIFF files to JPEG, mostly so my computer isn’t bogging down trying to process huge image files.
The panorama was created with Hugin—my luck with aligning night-time panoramas with Huginn is hit-or-miss, but I find it generally can find enough control points in a group of Milky Way shots to do its magic.
…I should just make a page about all that, shouldn’t I. A reference for my own use, if no one else’s.
Stayed up late again
I think it was worth it, even if a thunderstorm woke me up early this morning.
I shot at Spruces for about an hour and a half, and met a couple who had stopped in on their way from Brandon to Dauphin. (Hi, Doms & Debs, if you’re reading this!)
Here are a couple timelapses, one of the Milky Way floating above Clear Lake and another of the stars wheeling across the sky.
The Milky Way at an abandoned church
Last night the sky was clear and my batteries were charged. I loaded up my gear and headed to a spot I found last fall: an abandoned church south of me.
For almost the entire time I was there—about 10:45pm till 2am—it was just me and the fireflies and the crickets. A truck drove by at one point (very slowly, because I’d seen them coming and turned on my car’s lights), but other than that I was alone under the stars.
Look at all those fireflies.
I did up a multi-photo panorama, too, before I left.
Below is a timelapse of the night. It’s made of 169 still images, each one a 30-second exposure at 11mm, f/2.8, ISO800.
It was almost 3am by the time I got to bed. It’s been a while since I stayed up that late. I think it was worth it, though.
Update
I just spent 90 minutes or so stacking 16 images from my 2nd camera into this image of a portion of the galaxy.
Writing Retreat 2024: 7
Last night I was settled in, ready to just watch a bit of TV and then go to bed, when my darling wife texted me:
If the skies are as clear there as they are here, you need to go outside.
So I stepped out onto the patio and yes, yes it was pretty clear here. I gathered up my cameras and tripods and hit the road.
I set up on a gravel road not too far from town—if I want to, I could probably bike there—and snapped a few sets of Milky Way photos. With the 11–16mm lens, I was shooting ten-minute batches of 30 second frames, 11mm, f/2.8, with the ISO changing each ten minutes: 400, 800, and 1600. I wanted to see what I could get from the different ISO settings.
Unfortunately the dew crept onto my lens—or, more precisely, the UV filter I have screwed on over the lens. If I was smart, I’d have removed the filter and re-done my shooting; I think now it was the filter holding in a bit of heat that caused my dew problems.[1]Apparently the simple hack for dew is to wrap a couple hand warmers around the lens; you can hold them in place with tape or a beer cozy. Filed away for later experimentation.
I managed to get two stacks from the ISO 1600 run, and they look pretty good, I think. One is 8 images deep, and the other is 10.
I also got a stack of 18 images from the ISO 400 run, and… Well, you can judge for yourself, but I think ISO 1600 is the sweet spot between “detail” and “noise” (at least for me). Maybe ISO 800 would work, if I can keep the lens from misting over…
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Apparently the simple hack for dew is to wrap a couple hand warmers around the lens; you can hold them in place with tape or a beer cozy. Filed away for later experimentation. |
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Writing Retreat (5a — Milky Way)
There was quite the aurora show last night, and I’m going through my photos from that, but first I decided to process the 24 shots I took of the Milky Way. Two hours’ processing gets you the above photo.
The Process
I took some notes as I processed the images, because I want to do more of this and get better at it. The image, as eye-catching as it is, is pretty noisy, and I’m pretty sure there are better ways to do some of the things I did. But, for the nerd crowd (I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing), here’s how I made this particular image:
- snapped 24[1]One frame was wonky, so the final stack is 23 images deep. photos (aka “light frames”), 15 seconds, 24mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200
- snapped 3 dark frames, ie, left the settings the same and put the lens cap on
- did dark frame subtraction on every frame (opened each light frame and a dark frame in Gnu IMP as layers, dark frame on top, and set the Layer Mode to “Subtract”)[2]This gets rid of the camera’s “hot pixels”—the first time I tried stacking the images, I got smeary blue and red lines from the hot pixels.
- align images with
align_image_stack -a aligned_ *.JPG[3]Part of Hugin. - convert aligned images to JPG using
mogrify -format jpg *.tif[4]part of Image Magick. (mostly so I don’t overload my poor laptop) - open aligned images as layers in Gnu IMP
- set each layer mode as “Dodge”
- exported the whole shebang as a JPG
- re-opened the exported JPG
- Used Gnu IMP’s Filter → Enhance → Noise Reduction and cranked that baby up to 11 [5]16, actually.
- profit
Things to try next time:
- shoot RAW
- try a lower ISO value
Writing Retreat 2024 (3)
It was clear last night, so off I went to Riding Mountain to get some Milky Way photos. I shot a couple of panoramas, one just off the highway on the golf course / Wishing Well turnoff, the other at Spruces (thanks again, Tim!).
As I was leaving, thin clouds had started to roll in, and the moon—still half-full—was rising in the east.