I made a short video. Enjoy! (Nerds: There are a bunch of details below.)
Star Trails 2020 (so far)
star trails
Image Hill; fog
Last night Kathleen suggested I check out Image Hill for some astrophotography. Since it was only five minutes’ drive from the farm, I checked it out.
I got about 25 minutes’ worth of star trails (I set my timer for 30 minutes but my camera battery had other ideas).
Star trails, and a couple Perseids
I went to my dark spot last night from about 10:45 pm to 11:45 pm or so, and set up my camera. I was hoping to catch a few of the Perseid meteors, though I knew I was too early for the peak.
I let the camera run for about an hour (the battery actually died at about the 0:55 mark, but close enough), and the result is the star-trails photo above. I found two bright(ish) meteor trails in it, highlighted below. (The star trail image is bright because the sky was still faintly glowing with sunset light, even at 10:45, when I started; the meteors below are from later on in the process.)
Shooting star, Aug. 11, 2020 
Shooting star, Aug. 11, 2020
Earth Day eve star trails
The Space Weather forecast called for a slight chance of aurora and the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower, so I packed up my camera gear and went out west of town. I let the camera snap away for about half an hour before I decided I was tired and came home. I mean, it was a school night, after all.
I got one very faint meteor and no aurora to speak of, but that’s OK, I got some star trails out of it, too. And a truck passed by me on the gravel road, illuminating the field for me, so there’s that too.
Nerdy details: 113 images, 15 seconds each, 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, stacked in GIMP (no dark frames).
Springtime star trails
Forty-some minutes worth of Earth’s rotation. In the lower-left corner, you can watch the crescent moon and Venus setting; the moon is reflected, a bit, in the water that was on the field.
Nerd stuff: 153 light frames, 5 dark frames; each frame is 15 seconds, f/2.8, 11mm, ISO 800.
Thirty minutes, aimed south
Half an hour’s rotation of the earth sure does look interesting.
And here’s Orion, next to a power pole, with the bright lights of Souris, MB, on the horizon.
In related good news, my camera and lens appear to have survived last week’s tumble unscathed.
Galactic panorama
I went out last night, since it was clear, and visited my friend Tim, who’s camping this weekend at Wasagaming. I snapped some star trails at his campsite (my battery, almost dead, managed 80 shots at 10 seconds each).
On the way home, I pulled off the highway about ½ a mile down a gravel road, and tried out a panoramic photo of the Milky Way. I set my camera up in portrait mode and shot 5 photos, 45 seconds each, tilting the camera up after each shot. The camera started out aimed at the horizon and the last shot was pointed straight up at the zenith.
I stitched the photos together using Hugin, which did a very good job of automatically orienting the photos and finding the matches. I didn’t have to massage anything manually.
Le voilà:
More star trails
You’re not getting tired of these, are you? I hope not, because I’m not planning to stop.
This one was shot in the wee hours of Friday, from about 12:10 – 1:10 AM, behind cabin 650 at Elkhorn Resort. You can see the International Space Station streaking by (I saw it go overhead, too, and I waved to the crew). Also, there’s a short meteor streak in the lower third, on the far right.
Nerdy details: 219 images @ 15s, f/2.8, 16mm, ISO 800. No dark frames. Stacked using a Startrails plugin for GIMP.