Stars Trails, Cherry Springs state park

Yesterday myself and my colleague Eric went on a 200 mile road trip to Cherry Springs state park, Pennsylvania. Cherry springs has the darkest night skies in the east coast of US and hence is considered an ideal place for star gazing.

About 2 weeks ago, I did the same trip by myself but I missed to check the moon calendar, hence the sky was way too bright and came back with no good photos. This week, Eric showed interest and we both left about 2 in the afternoon. We reached the park about 7pm and was surprised to see the number of astronomers and telescopes in the field. As the sun had just set, we could not see any stars (except for planet Jupiter which was rising almost like a little moon!)

About 20 minutes later, the sky started becoming dark and the stars started showing up. With time, the sky became more and more dark and the stars more and more bright. To say it was totally awesome is a complete understatement. We spent the new few hours taking multiple photographs and amazing ourself at the sight! Thanks to Eric, he brought a couple of chairs where we sat and discussed everything under the sky (literally!) while we were waiting for the camera to take the pictures.

And about this photograph, I started by identifying where the northern star (Polaris) is seen, since I knew Polaris is the star that will be in centre and all the stars revolve around that (in the Northern hemisphere). I used the Big dipper constellation to find the Polaris. The handle of the big dipper always points to the Polaris. This video will help.

I then checked the ambient lighting by shooting a 30 second exposure at f/4 and ISO 1600. Once I knew how my camera sees the light, I reduced the ISO to about 200 and increased the exposure to 20 minutes. I had my camera set on a tripod and used a remote control to fire the shot. Since I also had the high exposure noise reduction setting ON in my camera, I had to wait for an additional 20 minutes for the camera to cancel out any noise. After 40 minutes, I got this photograph where I could see the trails rotating around Polaris. After two trips to the place and numerous attempts at star trails, I finally got a photograph that I was satisfied with! I was one happy camper for those few seconds! Regarding the composition, I used a 10-20mm wide angle lens and included a little bit of tree line in the horizon so that it adds perspective to the photograph.

Taken in: United States / Pennsylvania / Summit (show map)

Taken on: October 9, 2010

Tags:

cherry springs

state park

arun

arun sundar

pennsylvania

hdr

photomatix

clouds

astronomy

stars

star watching

science

interest

long exposure

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Camera: Canon EOS 7D, f/4.0, 1530 sec, 10mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 7D
Aperture:	f/4.0
Exposure Time:	1530
Focal Length:	10mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Unknown (9)
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS4 (11.0x20080609 [20080609.m.379 2008/06/09:02:00:00 cutoff; m branch]) Macintosh
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