star trails Archives • Into the Light Adventures

Shooting Stars & Milky Way, this month has been quite the show in the heavens. There are so many shooting stars and the moon is not out as the Milky Way passes over, so the night skies are lit up even with out a camera. If you get a chance head on out and take a gander.

I took these photos last Wednesday, I knew I would be able to see the Milky Way between 3 am and 5:50 am. So I wanted to try some light painting also. I parked my Jeep at the South end of my driveway and set my alarm clock. I opened the door at 3 and I could see the Milky Way just to the front of my Jeep. So by the time I got my camera set up it was right over top of it.

Light painting is when you take a light source and just shine it on your subject when the surrounding it dark. Your camera then picks up what ever you shine the light on. So much fun.

Now this photo below was taken from a go pro camera facing North. The two lines across the photo are shooting stars flying pass my camera. To get this photo below, I used the night lapse mode on the go pro and shot about 70 photos and stacked them on top of each other in a program called StarStaX. This is how the stars travel when you look north.

I will be putting a video together this week to show you the results in video mode.

Shooting Stars & Milky Way

by Sandra J

Night Time Photography Begins

By Sandra | April 20, 2021

Night Time Photography Begins, I am looking forward to an exciting year of photographing the night skies. I started over the weekend. April begins the warmer evenings and clearer skies to get out enjoy. Also, starting on the 16th of April, the annual Lyrid meteor shower began.

Each year that meteor shower kicks off when the Earth travels through what remains of the tail of the comet called Thatcher. The Thatcher comet only comes around once every 400 years, but it’s left the solar system strewn with debris from its tail. When that debris hits the earth’s atmosphere, we see streaks of light in the sky called shooting stars. April 22nd should be the peak of the meteor shower.

These photos were taken with a Go Pro 7 camera, I set it to night lapse starting about 9 pm and picked up the camera at 2 am. The stars are all moving from left to right in the photo, and you can see lines going the opposite way which are shooting stars. This photo below is a combination of 100 photos stacked on top each other so you can see how the stars move across the sky where I am standing. The bright light is the moon.

This photo below is a combination of 72 photos stacked on top each other from midnight to about 2 am. If you notice there are streaks of purple and pink in the midst of stars. They are different colors when you get a good photo of them.