Desert Night Sky Time Lapse Star Trails

Описание: Summer night sky watching is a pastime in the desert southwest. The temperatures are comfortable a few hours after sunset and it is easy to let the cameras roll through the night. Starting in July, the Milky Way becomes the main attraction and the summer season meteor showers also attract many onlookers. The full effect of summer night sky activity is best captured with long exposure or time lapse. If if the camera is set to interval mode, then star trails images or star trail videos can be processed with computer software.

Unfortunately, city light pollution is worse than ever. In order to get truly spectacular Milky Way images an enthusiast will likely have to travel hundred of miles to find dark sky site. Even with the extra effort, there will be satellites and some aircraft traffic to contend with. On the flip-side, all is not lost if one cannot travel far enough to escape big city lights and air traffic, because these elements can be incorporated into a night sky composition.

This video opens with night sky time lapse videos filmed at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which is next door to Las Vegas. Just forget about pristine night sky imagery in this park, because of the intense city glow. At Lake Mead the real fun at night is the jet trails. A good spot to set up is anywhere overlooking Boulder City Beach, since this area has the busiest flight paths to Las Vegas. Sometimes there are 4x4 trailriders passing through and there were more than average during my night sky session. Filming in Program Mode allows the camera to adjust the exposure to avoid complete white-out from nearby headlights.

The second location was the very south end of Death Valley National Park. At this site there is very little jet traffic, but there is city glow on the horizon and there is a wicked amount of satellite traffic. High winds kicked up without warning in Death Valley after sunset and the ensuing dust storm ended the time lapse session early, just when the Milky Way became visible. Moments like this can be frustrating, but that is nature.

The final location was the Spring Mountains overlooking the Pahrump Valley. Las Vegas is on the other side of the mountain and pointing the camera in that direction will result in severe light pollution. Aiming for the Milky Way from a Spring Mountains perch will result in a valley full of city lights. Setting the camera ISO sensitivity can be a toss up between going low for the bright lights or going high ISO to capture the galactic center. If there are no clouds to block the city lights, the Milky Way can be difficult to feature.

It has been almost two years since I filmed any night sky sessions and only one key item was forgotten. The buffer for compensating the extra time that it takes for the camera to process images was not correct during a few sessions. If the camera is not given enough time to finish tasks before the next interval exposure, it will go into full auto mode and capture whatever it can get. The 1 or 2 second buffer that I used in the past for long exposures were not enough to let the camera complete tasks between pictures. After switching to a 3 second buffer after each exposure and by adding the extra time to the interval, there were no more issues.

A variety of lenses were used and one odd lens was a night sky experiment. The “normal perspective” imagery was captured with a 14-24mm or 35mm lens. The warped wide angle perspective was created with a 16mm diagonal fisheye lens. The round pictures were the result of using an 8mm full frame circular fisheye lens that I experimented with and the results were okay. This fisheye lens has a 3.5 aperture that is a bit slow for night sky, but the big front element captures plenty of light. The Milky Way and night sky clouds definitely look interesting with a circular fisheye. In fact, it is possible the capture the entire night sky with this lens because it has a 180º view. That may be a project for the next night sky time lapse session!