… It was 6:15AM, and still dark enough to go back to bed. At this point, I realized I wasn’t cold even after standing in the dark for almost 2 hours. My dashboard thermometer showed 57 degrees, and only the slightest breeze was blowing. I’ve had some great nights out, but this one was exceptional …
In last week’s First-Timer’s Gear Guide, I mentioned that your camera can take hundreds of times longer to properly expose a scene at night than it might during the day time. It’s all too easy to open your shutter long enough that the stars in the scene will start to trail. In this article, I explain how to avoid star trailing when shooting from a fixed tripod.
So you’ve decided you want to try your hand at shooting the stars. You go outside, whip out your smartphone, and take a couple shots. You’re left with a mostly-black screen, with a big bright blurry circle in it if the moon was anywhere in the frame. How in the world do you take half-decent pictures of the night sky, anyway?
The Earth is constantly in motion, rotating once every 24 hours and taking a lap around the sun once a year. If you want to take great pictures of the night sky, it isn’t enough to know just what you want to shoot, but when. An astronomy simulation app can make planning your next successful imaging session much simpler. SkySafari 5 Pro is one such astronomy simulation app. Can it get the job done?
