Star trails from Chapman's Peak by eleanor

Star trails from Chapman's Peak

What I've learned about star trail photography this evening:

1. I'm going to need some method other than trying to triangulate south using the Southern Cross and the Pointers to work out where due south is. Why doesn't the Southern Hemisphere have a nice politely positioned star like Polaris in the north? No wonder those sailors got lost.

2. Unbelievably, Kommetjie is on the flight path of a number of jets. Clearly the pilots do the site-seeing thing at night too.

3. You can do star-trail pictures in the city, but only on the edges. I tried to take a picture from Silvermine, above the southern suburbs, and there's just too much light.

4. And 24mm will be far too small to get a full circle of stars, even if I can find the centre :)

(I used 120 x 30 second pictures, and combined them using an image stacking application from www.startrails.de.)
Aluta continua.
Cool!!! You did great! Love the colors too.
March 7th, 2011  
If you weren't getting planes, you would be getting satellites. That is fantastic. Star Trails is a good program, I like the movie[video] feature in it.
March 7th, 2011  
Excellent shots to make one.
March 7th, 2011  
great job Eleanor! well worth the time!
March 8th, 2011  
Cool pic!
March 8th, 2011  
great job, and thanks for all the useful info!
March 8th, 2011  
Spectacular! Is that Kommetjie in the distance?
March 8th, 2011  
@cath The brighter lights on the right are Imhoff's Gift - so it's not quite Kommetjie. I was parked just above the Red Herring, to give you an idea of location. I did try over Kommetjie, but the lighthouse just sends out too much light.
March 8th, 2011  
Wow. I really have to give that a try :)
March 8th, 2011  
Nice.
March 8th, 2011  
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