Star trail photography

I have loved star trail photos for quite some time now so I thought I would have a play.

This image of from a set of images taken last night, not the best night for star trails as there was a almost full moon but I needed to try out the theory.

The image below is a composite image from 55 photos stitched together, each photo was taken with a Nikon D5100 using the inbuilt “interval timer shooting” option.

The camera was mounted on a tripod and set up to take images with the following settings.

F-stop : 5.6

Exposure time : 15 seconds

ISO Speed : 1600

Focal length : 22mm ( I was aiming for 20 but hay ho)

The images where then stacked using StarStaX a fantastic little freeware application.

This is the resulting image:

StarTrail-Try1

Now there is lots wrong with this image, there is too much light pollution from the street lamps but it was able to prove the concept.

The next time I do this there will be no moon in the sky and I will be in a more remote location without street lamps and with a bit of luck it will be a lot nicer.