The Night Sky

I have always had a fascination with the night sky and photographing it has become much easier thanks to the advent of digital photography.

Stumbling across the excellent Ben Canales' astro photography images with fantastic shots of the milky way rising up through the frame, I was inspired to go out, especially after find Stellarium. Stellarium a free open source application that maps the night sky for you, based on your location at any given time and date. It labels the constellations for you and gives you an idea where the milky way is.

Ben Canales has produced a video which he has posted on Vimeo in which he passes on his basic tips for photographing the night sky. Manual focus, fix white balance, focus on inifinty (or just next to it for Canon users - Canon's version of infinity is obviously different to Nikon's!). Watch his video for his full breakdown on how to get started.

The image above was taken using my trusty EOS 400D at 17mm on my EF 17-40mm f/4L; 30secs @ f/4.5; ISO 1600. Neat Image was used in the post processing to reduce the noise which it has made a very good job of - if you have seen how noisy the 400D is at ISO 1600 then you will know what I am talking about.

You never know what you will find in your pictures until you get them on to the big screen. I just missed out on a meteor flashing through the sky, but the last image of the night produced the weirdest artefact. Posted below is a 100% crop without any post processing. Can you tell what it is?