My get-pushed challenge this week is star trails. In researching this I discovered that I have been remiss in updating my operating system, and I couldn't put StarStax on my computer. Note to self ... upgrade as soon as all the bugs are fixed for Yosemite. I was, however, able to put StarStax on a different computer. So, here is my first attempt..really a practice to see if I could even do this. This is 39 images, f/4.0, 10 second exposures at 10mm, iso 400. Shot in RAW, processed in Lightroom, and stacked in StarStax. There is a full moon this week, which lights the landscape a bit. I didn't get this pointed directly north, hence the circle isn't centered. I do have another location in mind and plan to try this again before week's end, and I will hopefully get the circle positioned better. For the "standing outside at night experience" it looks pretty good viewed on black.
Very very cool, April. It makes me wonder what time of day you had to take this. Makes me a little tired and cold... I'd love to be able to take photos of star trails!
@cathieg Thank you. I shot these around 8:30 in the evening. I was only out about 15 minutes, as they are only 10 second shots. Our weather has warmed, and it was in the upper 20's F and with no wind it wasn't too cold.
April this is just fantastic. I have no idea really how you did this with 39 images, that makes no sense to me lol ;) But I do actually like the off centred-ness of the star trails. FAV
@kph129 I know...Surprised me too! We have some Windows based computers for business, and StarStax ran one of those. Since I had to convert the RAW files and move them into StarStax anyway, it wasn't any trouble moving them to another computer. So glad I know how to do this now. Going out again tonight for another try. Great push!
@lynne5477 There is a Mac version now, but my operating system was too old. I need to update. I might look at Star Trails. I didn't want to update until the bugs in Yosemite are fixed.
Nicely done! I didn't realize there was software to stack the images for such a think. I always just had my camera on a VERY long exposure... Ha. That wouldn't work well where there was light pollution.
March 22nd, 2015
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Now I want to try this too, not sure when it'll be clear enough though..