review - An almost 'end of year one' blog review

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A 'cheating' composite photo

A separate foreground shot of our motorhome Bryony, recently out at Weymouth

A se[arate 'stacked' sky shot of  the Orion area which has been cropped and then blended with the original foreground shot. 

I just wanted you to see where I am slowly progressing to on my astrophotography/astronomy learning journey. 

An almost one-year review of the blog

I’ve conducted a brief review of my blog based on feedback from people who have visited it, an analysis by Chat GPT (I just wanted to try it out, having never used it before) and the patient ‘critical friend’ thinking that always comes from my wife.

I’ll just focus on the areas I want to improve over the forthcoming year for now, but if you want to read about my original aims for this blog then you can find them here at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/what-is-aim-and-purpose-of-my-new.html

Some possible blog improvement areas for 2026 could be: 

1.      Posts about acquisition of data and use of equipment are sound but I need to improve the clarity, depth, and readability of ‘post-editing’ tutorials. I also need to include more ‘before/after’ comparison images, explaining step-by-step what I did to get the improvements

2.      Whilst some of my posts are more narrative and less structured, which is fine, I need to include more consistent elements to improve usability for myself and readers e.g. ‘summary of key points’, ‘what I’d do differently next time reviews’, ‘bonus tips’

3.      I need to better categorise posts through their titles to help me and others find their way around the blog e.g. ‘Beginner guides to ….’ ‘Gear reviews’ ‘Image capture’ etc

4.      Increasing interactive features like comment prompts, Q+A posts, regular reader submission pages, ‘How did your results go?’ etc to build up more of a community feel and participation rate

5.      Improve the SEO, discoverability and broader reach of the blog. Use more long-tail keywords (uur??) and more tags/categories. An old IT friend of mine said “make your older posts easier to find and navigate”. And a very social media savvy younger friend of mine, well she said “more visual thumbnails, more summaries for sharing on social media, get an Instagram page”. Gulp!

6.      Two young, world travelling, former students of mine suggested some more varied content could broaden blog interest e.g. “‘Astrophoto travel stories’, ‘Visiting dark-sky sites’” (they were in La Palma when they suggested this one!); “‘interview some fellow local astronomers and astrophotographers you know’” (another of their suggestions). ‘Challenges and setbacks’, ‘Quick tips’. Lots to think about going forward.  

7.      The whole ethos of the blog is based on ‘going on a learning journey of self-improvement’ in astrophotography and astronomy, so is there a way I can provide a visual ‘roadmap’ of the site which gets regularly updated e.g. “If you’re just starting, do X, then Y after you’ve mastered A, then move to B”. Would this move the blog from being more of a journal to more of a community resource?

This was my very first effort at imaging M42

Taken from Cathagena in southern Spain in 2023

So, almost a year in, lots to ponder. I think the blog is beginning to get a strong and authentic feel; one that shares a learning journey in a relatable way backed up by practical details, an honest approach and even, perhaps, a niche focus on ‘beginners’. We will see how it goes forward in 2026. I, for one, will still be out there trying to capture images of our amazing cosmos. I will still be grappling with developing some reasonable post-editing skills for both milky way landscapes and deep space objects. I’ll still be trying to learn and remember all the constellations. I’ll still be trying to learn the basics about the cosmos.

As always, drop me a ‘hello’, introduce yourself, tell us about your own learning journey in astronomy and/or astrophotography. Share an image you are pleased with. Pose some questions.

And, stay safe out there, clear skies and have enormous fun

Steve

An alternative view of the Rosette Nebula

Translated, that means "I did something wrong in post processing but I haven't yet worked out what or how"

Taken in 2023

Postscript: Some Further Thinking About the Aims and Philosophy of This Blog

It’s December 2025, and I’ve found myself doing a bit more of that end-of-year ritual again: staring into space and pretending it’s “deep reflection,” when in reality I’m just trying to remember whether I locked the car up or not. Still, somewhere in that fog, I started thinking about this blog again - its aims, its philosophy, its raison d’être (or whatever the astrophotography equivalent of that is).

When I first sketched out what this blog was supposed to be (over here - https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/what-is-aim-and-purpose-of-my-new.html ) , I now realise I missed something important. The reminder arrived this week in the form of new SIRIL 1.4 updates - the Veralux hypermetric stretching scripts, to be precise. Every time I learn something new from the generosity of others - people like Riccardo, who seems to have compressed entire galaxies’ worth of wisdom into helpful, game-changing python scripts  - I’m nudged to remember to try and give something back, in my own small, insignificant way.

The truth is, I’m still a beginner. A proper one. The kind who looks at experienced astrophotographers discussing “best practice” and nods sagely while quietly Googling every third term or instruction. I can’t tell you the definitive way to do anything. But what I can do is talk about how I do it - warts, mistakes, mis-clicks, and misadventures included. And maybe, just maybe, by sharing the bumps in my learning curve, I can help another beginner avoid hours of head-scratching and existential questioning on what to do, how to do it and whether a finished result ‘looks right’!

While poking around the site, I realised one of my original goals needs more love: not just sharing my images - the glamorous and the ghastly - but sharing the story of my progress. The before-and-after comparisons. The “here’s what changed and why.” The “look how awful this first attempt was, and look how slightly-less-awful the latest one is.” Because ultimately, this whole hobby is a learning journey.

Recently, I read a blog post by someone named Patrick. Brilliant piece. Insightful. And of course, I forgot to bookmark it. I hate when that happens – anyway, what stuck with me was Patrick’s key point: we should all tell the story behind our imaging sessions. He had a list of questions to help guide that story. I can’t remember them all - but here are the ones I think were on the list: remember Eric’s famous line to Andre Previn “I have all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”

• What object was I imaging, and what’s its history?
• Where was it in the sky?
• How did I collect data, and why did I choose this object in the first place?
• What gear was I using?
• What was my shooting plan? Exposure details?
• What problems did I run into, and how did I wrestle them into submission?
• What did my post-processing workflow look like - ideally with screenshots and commentary?

After reviewing my blog, I realised I’m doing some of these well… and some of them not at all. A cosmic patchwork of effort, if you will.

And just to be clear: my goal isn’t to tell you the right way to do anything. There is no right way. Astrophotography is basically a giant cosmic buffet - everyone’s plate ends up looking different, and that’s half the fun. But by sharing how each of us approaches things, we give one another the chance to pick up new tricks, shortcuts, and “oh wow, so that’s how you fixed that” moments.

So, I wanted to revisit and clarify what I’ve said before about the aims and philosophy of this blog. If nothing else, it’s a reminder to myself that this space is supposed to be as much about the journey as the destination - messy, meandering, and occasionally magical.

Hope that helps make the direction of this blog a little clearer - and thanks for coming along for the ride.

PPS - Patrick, if you happen to read thios post - drop me a comment below - your blog was brilliant and I can't find it to share - sorry buddy! 

Imaging tutorial: Beginner's guide to photographing comets

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In today's blog, a 10-minute read, I 

• describe Comet Lemmon
• outline some beginner's tips for capturing this or another comet image
• suggest a way to post-edit your image of a comet

Detected first on 3^rd January 2025 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, pre-discovery images from the Pan-STARRS survey date back to November 2024. Initially thought an asteroid, follow up observations revealed a condensed coma and faint tail. A long-period comet! With perihelion to the sun on 8^th November 2025, its inbound orbit period is around 1,350 years. And it comes from far out in the solar system, probably the outer Oort cloud. So, this is a relatively rare visit to the inner solar system. 

Like other comets, Lemmon has a s small rocky or icy body nucleus and a coma where solar heating has caused ice to sublimate, releasing dust and gases to form the fuzzy cloud around the nucleus. Its tail is broadly curved, of diffused ionised gas, bluish-green in appearance. As the comet gets closer to the sun, sublimation will increase, releasing more material and enhancing they coma and tail. Solar wind and radiation pressure, as it approaches the sun, will continue to ensure that its tail points away from the sun.

Lemmon, with its eccentric and retrograde orbit as it approaches the sun, is probably an early relic from the formation of the solar system and so it gives astronomers a chance to study material relatively unaltered since then. Like many of our visiting comets remaining unchanged as they arrive in our area of space, our sun heats them causing their icy nuclei to release gas and dust on tails and comas that reveal their composition. Studying this material allows us to learn what the early solar system was made of and how planets such as ours may have formed; delivering water and organic materials, the building blocks of life.  Lemmon carries fresh samples of this primordial material – its chemistry and dynamics is of critical interest.

I have only photographed one comet so far and I found it one of the most fun bits of astrophotography I have done so far on my learning journey. The comet changed its appearance every night I went after it and you can read more details here at this previous post:  https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/chasing-comet-c2023-tsuchinstan-atlas.html

The positives - I located the comet and managed to image it. The 'future learning'? Getting my editing skills better developed, particularly on white balance!! 😆

I used Sequator to stack several images. 

Clearly at the time I hadn't then discovered 'freeze' ground' and also 'stack for comet' options!

I'm aiming to do much better on Comet Lemmon - if the cloud ever actually clears away long enough in the south west 😱 

Anyway, moving on - what are my ‘beginner’s’ tips for capturing this latest cosmic visitor, if you haven't caught one before?

1.      21^st – 26^th October, when it makes its closest approach to earth and is at its brightest. It is also when there is no or only a faint presence of a new moon

2.      In the northern hemisphere, it will appear in the NW sky after sunset (30 – 90 minutes), once twilight has faded.

3.      Find a clear unobstructed horizon in a dark sky site away from light pollution and be aware that as the night progresses this comet will appear lower and lower in the sky;

4.      Look for the constellation Boötes and its bright star Arcturus as lead in points to its location.

5.      Because it is low on the horizon, try to include some foreground elements such as trees, hills, silhouettes to add context and scale

6.      Its tail will probably point roughly away from the sunset west direction and somewhat downward

7.      A wide to moderate focal length e.g. 24 – 70mm on a full frame camera, or a longer lens/telescope if you want detail in the coma and tail; try ISO 800 – 1600, aperture F/2.8 – F/4 on a fast lens. Exposures 10 – 30” depending on your focal length and whether your mount tracks or not. Shoot in RAW

8.      You could use a star tracker with a 200 – 500mm lens or small refractor for greater tail structure, again ISO 800 – 1600, 20 – 60” and aperture F/4 – F/5; if you are not using a tracker – take multiple 1 – 5” shots and stack them later in software but align on the comet rather than the stars or do both and merge, to keep the nucleus sharp. 

 

Because of its low elevation, there may be atmospheric issues to deal with:

1.      Pick nights with good transparency, if possible, to combat reduced contrast and also haze issues

2.      Try for a clear horizon line under such circumstances; avoid shooting towards sunset glow

3.      Mitigate atmospheric blur and tail motion by taking many short exposures

4.      Use a light pollution filter if you are under lights

 Composition and framing

My Achilles heel in astrophotography and I do try hard to improve it. For comets, which are highly dynamic subjects, composition matters; go for foreground elements such as trees and mountains in wide angled shots. Comets tails always point away from the sun, so that helps in framing the subject. Try to align the comet’s tail diagonally through the image for a dramatic composition. Look for potential juxtapositions – a bright star, a star cluster, an element of the milky way.

How do you do the post processing of your comet image?

1.      In the past I have combined stacks – one aligned on the stars and one aligned on the comet – blending them afterwards in something like deepskystacker or SIRIL - masking carefully to retain both sharp stars and a crisp comet nucleus.

          Combine the two images by blending them together in photoshop or affinity photo

2.      Levels and curves adjustments should aim to extract tail detail without blowing out the coma; use noise reduction but preserve the faint structure in the tail

3.      Colour balance, try to preserve the greenish hues

4.      Crop and sharpen GENTLY to bring out structure without over processing to get artefacts.

What about some beginner tips for shooting comets generally?

1.      Do your research using sources like Sky and Telescope, Sky at Night, etc to learn where and when the comet will appear.  More often than not, best times are when the comet is far from the sun in the sky – so typically visible before dawn or after dusk and when the moon is absent or below the horizon. Choose nights when it is higher in altitude above the horizon to avoid atmospheric haze and light pollution. Stellarium and Sky Safari apps will help you visualise where the comet will appear relative to your horizon, and constellations above.

2.      I have already mention equipment choices above but to build on that:

a.      A DSLR or mirrorless camera that shoots in RAW format. An astro-camera will get deep detail but isn’t essential.

b.      Lens or telescope? Tough question! Wide angle (14 – 50mm) will capture the comet in context with the landscape or milky way. Telephoto or small refractors (100 – 300mm etc – will reveal coma structure and tail detail

c.       A tracking mount such as a skywatcher star adventurer 2i (other brands are available) will allow you to go beyond the limit of shorter exposure times

d.      Tripod and intervalometer enable stability and no vibrations.

e.      Camera settings – how long is a piece of string? If I were doing a TRACKED image then I’d probably go somewhere with ISO 800 – 1600; F/2.8 to F/4 for wide angle lenses and F/4 to F/6 for telephotos; exposures 20 – 60” if tracked and 2 – 10 “if not.  White balance daylight or 4000K

f.        Multiple frames rather than one long exposure are better, it improves signal-to-noise ratio and allows stacking later.

g.       And always shooting in RAW

 

Photographing comets is a unique challenge that combines astrophotography, artistry and timing. Prepare well, bring the right equipment, master your post editing workflow and remember, you are capturing a rare celestial event and ancient cosmic visitor.

Imaging session - The Pacman nebula - first effort.

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Just returned from a motorhome trip to Croatia. Whilst there I had the opportunity to image the nebula below.

My location was a forest clearing high in the Croatian mountains, near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovenia. No light pollution but a full moon, so I was using a light pollution filter. Clear big open skies. Very chilly but still, no wind.

My sound scape was one of hooting tawny owls and barking sheepdogs, left out in the upland fields; their calls echoing across the hills for several miles. Thirty metres away, the sound of wild boar snuffling and squealing; crashing through the understory.

We all find being under a big sky looking up at stars and constellations, the faint milky way cloud, soothing and enlightening. Lulled into a peaceful contentment by the regular clicking of my DSLR, it was the rising hairs on the back of my neck, the first warning indication. Distant dogs had stopped their canine conversation; three dogs, a mere few hundred metres away had started one - frantic barks and growls. Tawny owls had gone silent; the boars gone to ground. As the moon rose above the pine forest canopy, shafts of light illuminated the little clearings below it.

Fleeting, rapidly moving shadows; darting and pausing, sniffing the air. I thought it was a myth. It truly isnt. Wolves really do howl at a rising full moon.

This night, I won the Guiness Book of World record entries for 'fastest pack up of astrophotography equipment'. As I slid beneath the duvet at 1am, the tousle haired beauty I have been married to for nearly forty years muttered " you are in early". "Wolves" I replied. "So get back out there so I can claim the life insurance then" came the unexpected sleepy reply!

I don't get this kind of hassle up at Lowery Cross on Dartmoor! And so this is my excuse for a poor image of the Pacman Nebula - sorry folks!

Equipment and processing:

Canon 800D and Zenithstar 61ii on EQM-35-PRO mount; ISO1600, 240" x 30 with no calibration frames. Poorly processed in SIRIL, GraXpert and Affinity Photo.

Imaging session - Astrophotography in Croatia

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I am a lucky man. I own a motorhome and and retired. I can go on long trips. Our most recent one has been 3800 miles to Dubrovnik and back. France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. From alpine pastures and glacial landscapes to karst scenery and dalmation coastal geomorphology. You can tell I was a geography teacher can't you! 

Perfect nights are usually rare things on such trips.  Campsite light pollution, late arriving motorhomes,  city light pollution, cloudy nights, full moons, fog, woodland sites, roaming bears and wolves. So much to contend with. And then some of the best dark sky sites are high up, along windy narrow roads that are tricky to drive in 4T motorhome! 

Below are some images from Rovinji on the coast, a pretty peninsula town in Istria, Croatia. On this night it was a bright full moon, a starkly lit promenade, a tree covered campsite, a neon lit town on a hill.  So these are by no means good images. 

Capture details - canon 800D DSLR, samyang 14mm F/2.8 lens, intervalometer, carbon fibre tripod.  ISO 400, 11" x 30 images. everything stacked in Sequator. 

Discussion - Upgrading our laptop so what does an astrophotographer need?

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In today's blog, a 5-minute read, I 

• outline requirements you might look for in a new laptop that you use ofr astrophotography

My old laptop is a dell XPS 13. Portable, lightweight, compact. It has done sterling service for the last eight years. It has travelled with us extensively; been dropped and generally thrown around in a rucksack and a motorhome. Its lid is covered with stickers collected over our travels. I am very, very sentimentally attached to it. 

I love my old laptop. I was heartbroken when I discovered that windows 10 updates will stop in October. I immediately sought to upgrade my old XPS but, alas, on reading up on the dell website, I discovered that my processor was one generation too old. An interent search on various forums confirmed my worst fears; those who had tried to migrate across to Windows 11 on this laptop had had nothing but problems subsequently. 

So, the boss and I decided now was the time to upgrade - but to what? 

Well, we travel a lot so a desk top is out. As is a large heavy laptop. Maggie decided that our new one should have specs that would allow me to continue my astrophotography journey for the next few years. I am slowly progressing towards PixInSight, Star exterminator etc - so it will need some grunt! We want something which will last us another eight years, so good reliable build quality.  I was dispatched to do some research.

My old laptop had an inbuilt graphics Intel card, 256 Gb storage drive and 8Gb of RAM. It has done amazingly well, hasn't it. 

After some thinking, here is my list of 'requirements' for my new laptop

• bigger screen - 14"
• still lightweight and portable; slim build
• non touch screen but with good high resolution and colour reproduction/contrast for photo editing (1920 x 1080 minimum) 
• haptic keyboard
• 32 or 64Gb RAM so I can work more quickly with Fits files and stacking
• a good CPU quad core (minimum) processor intel i7 or i9 is my preference, for speedy stacking, rendering, etc 
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• at least four USB ports - thunderbolt 4 would be preferable; built in SD cartd reader as well 
• efficient thermal cooling technology; multiple fans which are QUIET!
• long lasting battery - at least 18 hours if possible 
• good after sales back up and service

Why all the high end specs stuff? Well, I use a DSLR and shoot in RAW. RAW images can be data intensive and stacking a hundred or so and all the calibration frames as well can be really draining on computer resources. My old laptop has struggled at times, especially when using SIRIL.  The CPU does all the grunt work and so I need something more powerful. Fast storage is a must when processing and editing all these files. And of course, the more programs I download in the future, the more memory space I will need so 1 TB seems to be the thing and within my budget - just! As well as editing thye photos, I also make YouTube videos and this is where the old laptop struggled - writing voideos to storage; video editing software etc. Laggy!  This should be so much more quicker with a faster SSD drive. 

What have I ended up with?

Another Dell XPS. No seriously, I looked at hundreds of diffrent laptops of various makes on-line and in store; but at the end, I kept coming back to two brands - Dell and Lenovo. I have used them both throughouit my teaching career and they have proven to be bomb proof as far as I am concerned.  

Dell were selling off the last of their XPS ranges and offering substantial discounts as they have introduced a new 'different' laptop range this year. Consequently, I paid precisely what I paid for the old one eight years ago but this time with a £500 discount on top and the extra warranties thrown in. 

The new laptop

Bigger screen and so much faster processing and a dedicated NVIVDIA graphics chip

And yes, the background is one of my milky way images taken down a local beach 

My new configuration specs are: 

• CPU - Intel Core Ultra 7 155H  12 core 3,85 Ghz processor 
• 32 Gb RAM
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a dedicated Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• 14" screen, slim, lightweight
• haptic keyboard
• non touch screen with high resolution
• battery that lasts 18 hrs
• ultra quiet two fans and four cooling vents 
• 2 year warranty extension
• 2 year battery warranty extension
• superior after sales technical support package

Basically, I got everything I wanted at a budget I could afford.  Having used the laptop for the last month, I have to say I am really impressed. It is blisteringly fast, lovely to use and rather stylish in design. The haptic keyboard is a revelation. 

Sadly the weather hasnt yet played ball and so I have yet to use SIRIL on it but I suspect it will be far faster than what I have been normally used to.  I'll let you know! 

Lightweight, compact, and yep, sadly decorated already

A tradition that neither of us know where from, but we decorate the lid of our laptops with 'sticker's picked up during our travels! I know - a sad desecration of a besautiful piece of technology. 

We are heathens! 

Postscript:

I have had the laptop for just over a month now and have started some basic processing in Siril, Affinity Photo and GraXpert. The new laptop is blisteringly fast - around five times faster on just about everything I have asked it to do thus far. Take basic OSC preprocessing scripts in Siril. Old laptop, could take up to 25 minutes. Same data on new laptop - five minutes flat. Stacking data in affinity photo - old laptop - 35 minutes; same data new laptop - 6 minutes.  It really is an impressive beast. Moreover, it doesn't overheat, the fans don't get noisy. 

Basically, absolutely loving the new laptop and chose the right specs! Can I use it out in the field for guiding? No idea as I use an ASIair mini linked to my smartphone - but much hunch? Suspect so! 

Planning tutorial: beginner's guide to planning your first milky way photograph shoot

Beginner's guide to taking and post editing milky way photographs 

This post is in two parts:

• PART A - a cheat sheet to help your decision making on the night or on a reccy  - see below

• PART B - sharing my post editing workflow for milky way images  - see next post here at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/12/editing-tutorial-guide-to-how-i-post.html

Part A - a cheat sheet to help your decision making on the night or on a reccy

Below you will find three images which you can print screen and assemble onto an A4 sheet and then print off:

Copyright PlymouthAstroBoy

Based on own thinking and learning from two different 'free' on-line courses by 

Kristina Rose Photography and Dan Zafra Photography

The sheet is straight forward enough to use - it takes you through a series of questions/decisions. At the end you should have a clear picture of WHAT ytou want to achieve and HOW you are going to achieve it. 

Let me know if you find it useful and whether there are changes you would recommend - drop me a comment in the box at the end of the post. 

Whilst the sheet above is a good prompt on the night or during a reccy - there are other things to consider and I wrote a series of posts some time ago about other aspects:

• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first.html   EQUIPMENT 
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_19.html  PLANNING 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_20.html  SETTINGS 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_5.html  COMPOSITION 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_21.html  STACKING and TRACKING
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_22.html  SELFIES 

A recent effort from along my milky way photography learning journey

Wembury Church South Devon 

Imaging tutorial: Beginner's guide to using a DSLR camera and/or GoPro for taking star trail photographs

 First visit to this astronomy/astrophotography blog? Well, firstly a warm welcome to you and thanks for stopping by. After reading this post, if you want to find out more about me and this blog, why not visit my introductory page at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/welcome-to-my-new-astronomyastrophotogr.html  You can also browse other posts by using the search bar or the blog post list on the right hand side and I'd really like to hear from you via the comment boxes. Drop me a tip, an observation or a question. Take care and clear skies to you.  Steve 

The Weather has been pants hasn't it. Everytime there has been a clear night recently, it has always coincided with a full moon; or I have had other pressing family commitments and so haven't been able to get out at night. 

So I am severely curtailing my ambitions for my landscape astrophotography over the next few months. What I would like to walk away with at the end of October is the following:

• a circular star trail landscape photograph of my local church
• similar photo of Windy Cross (A Granite cross and little leat waterfall) on Dartmoor 
• a star trail photo of Rame Head chapel

On the milky way landscape photo front, my ambitions are to obtain by end of October:

• Dartmouth Day mark 
• Start Point Lighthouse
• Rame Head chapel
• Wembury Church
• The Great Mewstone at Wembury Point 
• a better image of Bigbury Island under the milky way alongside one of the huge beach tractor as well

So, to the focus of this blog post. Star trails on a DSLR and/or GoPro. 

Funds are tight. I cannot afford another DSLR body at the moment. My two other cameras are a GoPro Hero 9 and a Sony HX-90 digital compact.  I think the trails will be easier to do on the GoPro, but I am open to that belief being challenged. 

Copyright: Wheal Owles by Simon Torr

So, here are my tips for using your DSLR to gain star trail images:

*source of some information: Peter Zelinka Star Trails tutorial

** I haven't yet shot any star trail images so these are my PLANNED INTENDED settings for future shoots 

Firstly equipment! You will need:

• DSLR
• dummy battery and power bank OR several spare batteries
• Stable tripod with good ball head
• Intervalometer
• wide angle lens - in my case my samyang 14mm. If you want curves - try a 24mm lens, for lines, try 50mm
• Fast SD card - you will need a class 10 UHS class 3 memory card, minimum 32gb - better 64gb

Secondly, what settings do we use? 

1. apply the 300 rule and go for 90% sky coverage in your landscape photo 
2. do one foreground shot at the start or end of your session - so that you can merge it with your stacked star trails in post editing
3. settings:  ISO 1600+ to get lots of stars and dense bright trails; ISO 100 - 800 to get fewer stars and bigger gaps between individual trails with better star colours. In an urban sky - try ISO 400 to 800 at F/4 to F/5.6
4. If light conditions are too bright - reduce ISO and open up the aperture - try F/4
5. shutter speeds - 20 to 30". However, if you use a very low ISO you can increase your shutter speed to 60", 120" or even 180", capturing more light, a cleaner image with less noise and grain. 
6. White balance 3000 - 5200K. I will be probably starting at 3600K. Don't use 'auto'
7. LNR off
8. use an intervalometer. Here it gets tricky. You will either use a 1" delay between your shots or the length of your shutter speed + 1" more. And you need to experiment first before you go out for the night. Peter Zelinka's tutorial really explains it well and you can access it here https://www.peterzelinka.com/startrails
9. I set my intervalometer to take around 3 hrs worth of shots minimum, but that's just me. 
10. set your DSLR to evaluative metering
11. Direction - face north = circles; S = downward arcs; E or W = upward arcs

So what about settings for your GoPro? Mine is a Hero 9

• Night Lapse mode
• FOV - wide
• shutter speed 30" - if in urban environments - then shorten it
• Interval - auto
• ISO 100 - 200 (or 100 min to 800 max)
• If using Protunes - Flat colour and WB of 4000 - 5500K
• shoot in RAW images
• collect 3 - 5 hrs worth of images

Equipment: 

• stable tripod
• spare batteries and/or powerbank and cable
• GoPro camera

Above is an outline of how I go about getting my star trail images. The next step is how to post edit them ad for that I use a program called Starstax.  Having not yet taken any star trails, I won't go into using StarStax until I have used it myself. 

Postscript update:

How am I progressing with star trail imagery?  

I think fair to say, not as well as I might have hoped. 

Here is my first ever star trail shot taken on a motorhome site in Dubrovnik in October 2025. 

So, what's gone wrong?

1. I was shooting on a night with a huge amount of light pollution - bright campsite lighting, rising full moon and light aura from nearby port
2. motorhomes constantly coming and going on the site caused headlight and red brake light reflections in the clouds above 
3. wrong settings in camera - ISO was too high at 800
4. poor processing in starStax - first time I have used it; ditto in Affinity Photo.

Next time: 

1. ensure there is no light pollution
2. choose better settings on camera particular ISO, shutter speed and interval between shots 

Have you got a star trails shot to share with us? Have you got any tips to help us take better star trail photos? What can we do to combat light pollution when doing star trails? 

If so drop us a comment in the box below. 

Until next time, clear skies, have fun and take care out there. 

Imaging session - IC1396 and the Elephant Trunk's nebula.

 First visit to this astronomy/astrophotography blog? Well, firstly a warm welcome to you and thanks for stopping by. After reading this post, if you want to find out more about me and this blog, why not visit my introductory page at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/welcome-to-my-new-astronomyastrophotogr.html  You can also browse other posts by using the search bar or the blog post list on the right hand side and I'd really like to hear from you via the comment boxes. Drop me a tip, an observation or a question. Take care and clear skies to you.  Steve 

This is my first attempt at IC 1396, a large emission nebula which is a region of ionized gas that glows due to the energy from nearby stars, particularly a very bright, massive star (HD 206267).

It is two nights worth of data as outlined below taken over two nights when there was a full moon, so to be honest I am pleasantly surprised that anything showed up at all!

IC 1396 has a magnitude of 3.5 and is in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 2,400 light-years away from Earth; a vast and complex area. Its most prominent feature is the Elephant's Trunk Nebula (IC1396A), a concentration of interstellar gas and dust forming a dark, finger-like structure. The entire IC1396 nebula spans over 3 degrees and has a near hollow and gas-poor interior and a complex of dark nebulae threaded throughout the perimeter. Many of the dust structures are aligned so they appear to radiate away from the stars in the nebula’s core.

Look for the reddish star which is Mu Cephei, also known as Herschel’s Garnet Star. The tenth brightest star in the constellation Cepheus, with an average apparent brightness of 4.08, it has a radius 1,260–1,650 times that of the Sun and is one of the biggest stars ever discovered; situated at a distance of about 2,840 light-years from Earth.

IC 1396A, better known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, is a dark nebula formed by an irregular pillar of dust many light-years long. Pressure from bright stars in the core blows dust from that area leaving behind a darker region at the centre of the nebula while compressing dust around the edges, which drives new star formation. As a result, up to 250 young stars- all less than 100,000 years old, have been detected in infrared images taken of the Trunk region. The Trunk itself is about 20 light-years long. It is the first image in which I have ever captured a strong star formation area of the heavens above.

Imaging equipment used:  Canon 800D DSLR, Zenithstar 61ii refractor scope, EQM-35-Pro mount and guiding with ASIair mini, RVO 32mm guide scope and ZWO 120mm mini guide cam.

Data acquisition: two nights of same data collection – ISO1600, lights 25 x 300”, 10 darks, 10 biases and 15 flat frames. Full moon at 96%+ on each night. Location – two different sites in Cornwall.

So, what do I think about the images?

They were quite hard to process. I use SIRIL, GraXpert and Affinity Photo and somewhere along the way I tend to over saturate the colours and incorrectly process the background sky. I have overstretched the images resulting in star over-bloating as well. So, these are very much a first effort.

Am I pleased with them? Yes. Sort of. I am pleased I captured the data on very bright moonlit nights from two separate locations. The post editing? Well, as always, it is a work in progress isn’t it. 

Report card?  Considerable effort, showing some good acquisition skills but clearly more focus required in post editing! B+

These are the minimally processed first effort images 

First effort 'over-cooked' images

So a third effort will be necessary over the next few days

What do you think I could do to improve the processing further? Let me know in the comment box below. Thanks 

My most recent re-edits.....progress is slow! 😅

Imaging session - IC 1318 The Sadr region

 First visit to this astronomy/astrophotography blog? Well, firstly a warm welcome to you and thanks for stopping by. After reading this post, if you want to find out more about me and this blog, why not visit my introductory page at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/01/welcome-to-my-new-astronomyastrophotogr.html  You can also browse other posts by using the search bar or the blog post list on the right hand side and I'd really like to hear from you via the comment boxes. Drop me a tip, an observation or a question. Take care and clear skies to you.  Steve 

The Sadr region, known as IC 1318 or the Gamma Cygni Nebula, is a diffuse emission nebula that surrounds the star Sadr.  Around 5000 light years away from Earth, the area also includes the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) and The Butterfly Nebula as well - which is really IC 1318. You can see a dark thin dust alley and then two glowing cosmic wings either side of it - hence 'The butterfly'. 

The nebulas glow comes from nearby stars releasing streams of charged particles known as stellar winds; these ionise the gases causing them to emit light. 

Sadr is a yellow-white supergiant with x12 the mass of our sun and x 150 its radius. It lies at the centre of this stunning Hydrogen II emission region. 

So, acquisition details? 

This is the result of two nights worth of data, processed in SIRIL and Affinity Photo. 

Equipment used: 

• Astro-modded Canon 800D
• Samyang 135mm F/2.8 lens
• EQM-35-Pro mount
• ASIair mini with RVO 32mm guide scope and ZWO 120mm mini guide cam
• Optolong L-enHance filter clip in eos

Acquisition times:  on each night 

• 35 x 240" subs
• 10 darks
• 10 biases
• 20 flats 

I find post editing difficult. There is so much to learn and I am never sure whether I am getting the final image right in terms of tone and look at the end of it all! 

But, here are my three attempts thus far in the order I did them: 

So, this one is fairly good. I like it but I felt I could have done a slightly more aggressive black point adjustment to get the background sky darker; taking care not to blow out the stars

😧From one extreme to another. Second go and I overcooked it - too much saturation, vibrance and contrast. Back to the drawing board! 

And my third effort - a halfway house. Better sky, better colours, not oversaturated but lost the stars! 

Have I ever told you this post editing alarkey is hard work? 

Postscript:

I have downloaded and been using Siril 1.4 with Veralux hypermetric Stretching. I have also reworked my workflow to include some of the Seti Astro Cosmic Clarity Suite Pro. 

So here is exactly the same data used above - here is the new image: 

Which of the images above do you prefer and why? Have you used the new python script Veralux Hypermetric Stretch - what did you think of it? 

As always, drop me a comment below with your views, tips, observations for further discussion. 

Clear skies, stay safe out there and have loads of fun.

Steve