Scozmo's Photery

This is the sister (or brother) post to It Rained, I’d like to expand on the night / morning activities I captured.

The camera was outside for the first time in a long time because I wasn’t expecting rain but, the good news was, I had bought a jacket and it was on so, touch wood, all is well.

I set the camera up to start at 10:45 and went to bed (we’re old now, allegedly, so we head for bed and read.

The upshot of it all was a decent set of varied images, a star trail shot and a time-lapse video 🙂

I always go out and find something to focus on, then set focus to Manual, this time it was the new Moon, bear in mind this is using a 13mm wide angle so it looks tiny. (Small / far away!) 🙂

So this was the first shot at 22:45

I had deliberately aimed high to try and capture the Pole star as a centre for the star trails.

As I flicked through the 1205 shots, I picked out the start of pale Aurora Borealis around 23:15.

It was 00:20 or twenty after midnight or 12:20, depending on your prefs, on May 1st when I noticed that green streak right down towards ground level.

I have no idea whether that is a ground striking meteor or a green laser being fired into the sky? Any thoughts? On the opposite side of the shot, the Moon is about to appear as it sets.

I must point out that these shots are looking quite dark on my preview on a large monitor, please let me know if you feel they are too dark or, if brightening your display doesn’t work for you.

It is 00:43, the Moon has appeared on the left, there’s an Aurora going on and an aircraft coming in from the right, just next to the tree. These shots are at 4 seconds so it must have been a slow plane!?

The Aurora got a good bit brighter and displayed better just after this.

All of this is happening around 01:30 am.

I kept one shot because it has a brighter patch showing through the low cloud, I feel there may have been more to the Aurora than we are seeing.

That was at 02:26.

The sky was also beginning to brighten and I picked out a shot that shows another streak, top right but also, the darker top left corner as the morning lightens top right.

That second shot was at 03:01, the last shot was at 03:40, I have a feeling the batteries gave out then, I’m pretty sure I’d set it for 04:00.

So that was the last of the night, all I had to do now was pull them all together as layers and blend them into one image.

The bright spots to the left are the setting Moon, the green “event” on the far right remained and I did manage to capture a centre for the trails. All in all, not a bad night apart from the possibility of a damp camera but, I think I got away with it!!!!

Here’s hoping! Anyway, here’s the time=lapse video.

Alyth skies