Taking star trails with consumer digital camera

chrisyeo · Post by **chrisyeo** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:02 am

Just learnt a new technique to take star trails with an ordinary digital camera.

I just took my camera, set it to continuous shooting mode and 15s long exposure, pointed it at Canis Major and Orion, and used a rubber band to hold down the button.

After 50 exposures (about 20 mins) I took the photos and combined them in photoshop using the 'lighten' function.

Here's what I got. Suprised that an ordinary digital camera can take star trails?

Post by **weixing** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:16 am

Hi,
Very nice and light pollution proof star trails... :k-chuckle:

Anyway, this is the digital method of star trails... remember seeing this method in somewhere... is it Sky&Telescope??

Have a nice day.

Post by nF » Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:43 am

Woah... not bad.

chrisyeo · Post by **chrisyeo** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:38 pm

Yah, the 'lighten' function is very light pollution proof and is a technique from an article I read in Sky and Telescope.

The idea to use a rubber band to take star trails is from a cloudy nights article: http://www.cloudynights.com/astrophotog ... /canon.htm

hlyf · Post by **hlyf** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:16 pm

whoa cool. did u process it to remove noise? cos after i leave my digicam on for some time long exposure (15s) pictures have a lot of noise..

chrisyeo · Post by **chrisyeo** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:46 pm

No processing except the 'stacking' and size reduction from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

There is quite a bit of hot pixels in the original resolution and also many gaps in the star trails (camera processing and saving time between shots), but they are not very visible at this size.