Star Trail

For people unfamiliar with astrophotography a star trail may sound like something from Star Trek. (Oh yeah, I got a Trek reference in!) First, let’s start with a visual representation by checking out the image to the left. Pretty, huh? That’s a star trail. Basically what you do is set your camera (digital or film) to a slow exposure. Over minutes or hours you will capture the movement of the stars. Technically it isn’t the stars that are moving, I guess, it’s the Earth. But you get the idea.

I think this is a great way to get into astrophotography. It doesn’t require any fancy lenses or computerized help. You can do it with pretty much any kind of camera and you get something that is all sorts of pretty when you are done. The thing about all forms of astrophotography is that your images really need to be pretty high resolution so you can really see what you are getting a picture of. This means lots of disk space. If you are like me you won’t want to keep every single image you take so you’ll end up deleting the ones that are substandard. Do this enough times and your hard drive will look like a fragmented minefield. When getting into astrophotography it is important to start defragging regularly.

Do you have an interest in astronomy? Have you ever tried to capture a star trail? How did it go and what camera did you use?

Photo Credit xtacocorex

June 15th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Astrophotography | (0)