Better to be lucky than good – or so the saying goes.
Better to be lucky than good – or so the saying goes.
When trying to take star trail photos in the southern hemisphere you look for the south celestial pole. The reason you look for this is that is the point in which the stars rotate around forming the circle.
Accurately finding the south celestial pole isn’t easy, well for me anyway. You can ‘draw’ a line through the head and foot of the southern cross into the night sky and then ‘draw’ a line perpendicular out from the pointers. Where these two lines intersect is the south celestial pole. As you can imagine, I don’t always get my ‘drawing’ correct.
On this night I set my camera up, made sure the tree I wanted was in frame and crossed my fingers. There is good planning, and then there is just good old-fashioned luck. Better to be lucky than good – or so the saying goes. Thankfully luck was on my side this night.
The star trails photo you see is made up of 10 photos that have the shutter open for three minutes. I did plan on having double the photos and staying out there for one hour. This would give you longer star trails to show the rotation of the earth relative to the south celestial pole more distinctively.
As always though, my imagination got the better of me. I only lasted the 30 minutes because I was again hearing footsteps in the paddock and on the road. I told this story one night and was reminded of the Kilcoy Yowie. I reckon if I had shined my torch when I was hearing those footsteps, I would have ruined my photo but found the fabled Kilcoy Yowie. Who is coming with me next time to help find the Kilcoy Yowie hehe