Scozmo's Photery

August 12/13th 2025

I posted a page recently detailing the start of the Autumn / Winter Aurora season here in central Scotland and got into a bit of chat about my preparation and setup. Last night was forecast to be totally clear all night and warm so, I prepared and set up a camera on a tripod out on the patio! That always makes me feel a bit uncertain, given British weather or just weather in general these days but all was fine in that respect.

As it was supposed to be totally clear, I simply set up my other camera in the window with an older 18-300mm lens on a Z50 using a fitting adapter, one of the reasons I chose to go Nikon again was the ability to carry on using my F mount lenses while I attempted to buy new Z lenses. I only have a couple still; not cheap this photography lark is it?

So, talking of prep! I checked focussing using some lights on the horizon, there was nothing at all in the sky to focus on at that point. I even went outside, checked again using ………. auto-focus! Aha!

So, I set up the time-lapse on the camera in the window and went to bed.

This morning I popped the SD card into the Mac and started the load into Lightroom….. as I said before, I do a click-through of every shot, looking for anomalies in the sky but, I only got two shots in when it became obvious I’d screwed up the focussing!

Dammit. C’est la vie. 530 images deleted/ but, there were objects in three of them so ….

Click or tap any image to enlarge

The first may well be a satellite that’s just caught the light, the trail isn’t very long but, the last two, yes, meteorites or something, possibly out of Perseids?

Anyway, I am about to check the images on the second, outdoor camera …….

Measure twice, cut once? 😉

Later that same day 🙂

I just found the “last edited” info in the page settings, it’s been three hours since I wrote the piece above. In that time I’ve had a shower, (do you need to know that?) clicked through 1600+ images from my outside camera, selected and slightly edited five images from said camera, created a Star trails composite image and, deleted 1600+ images because there really was not a lot going on last night, no Aurora, no Noctilucent clouds, just a few meteors, which is fine by me.

We have had thunder & lightning warnings here since yesterday afternoon, all for today from 14:00 so, I’m also getting all the batteries charged up ready, just in case 😉

And! A family, or two, of Grey Partridge appeared in the garden outside so I had to get as many shots as possible of them, we’ve never had them in here as young as these were before. That also reminded me, I really have to clean this window!!! (TODAY!)

Meanwhile, having edited more from last night, I can now share those. The entire session ran from 23:30 last night until 04:04 this morning, during g which it looks like a vehicle turned up with headlights blaring just before midnight, possibly the deer hunters!!!!

Whaaaaaat? Not something I’m over the moon about but, there are a lot of Roe deer around here and they only keep the numbers down and possibly make use of what is culled? I must ask.

You know! In my aging mind, I thought… “I’ll see those blurred ones on this camera!” Duh, only if they happened to be completely synchronised!

Each image has something moving through the sky that I take to be faster than a satellite but you may have to look closely in some.

That last one is a beaut!

So that was all the activity I spotted on my click-through, other than obvious satellites, they tend to appear in a sequence of shots and have a shorter trail but, I couldn’t waste 1600 images could I?

You can see the field lit up by the headlights in this composite shot made of all 1600 stacked in layers.

Not a waste of setup by any means, in my mind anyway. Here’s looking forward to another clear night tonight and … who knows?

Thank you for dropping by 🙂

Alyth skies

our night sky