star trails - Patrick Johanneson

Earth Day eve star trails

Posted on April 22nd, 2020April 22nd, 2020 by Patrick

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

Posted on March 29th, 2020March 30th, 2020 by Patrick

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

Posted on February 29th, 2020February 29th, 2020 by Patrick

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.

Prairies starscape, featuring Orion and a power transmission tower

In related good news, my camera and lens appear to have survived last week’s tumble unscathed.

Galactic panorama

Posted on August 30th, 2019August 30th, 2019 by Patrick

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:

Panorama of the galaxy. 5 images, stitched with Hugin.

More star trails

Posted on May 26th, 2019May 26th, 2019 by Patrick

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.

Timelapse of the trails. Approx. 75× actual speed.

Nerdy details: 219 images @ 15s, f/2.8, 16mm, ISO 800. No dark frames. Stacked using a Startrails plugin for GIMP.