Star trails over Northern Lights

windrunner · 16 Aug 2015

First attempt at a star trail last night and got lucky with a little bit of Northern Lights in there too. I was surprised as I thought the lights were mainly a winter thing.

Its Culloden Viaduct near Inverness.

Anyway - 60 shots, 30 seconds each, ISO 800 and F2.8 - last few frames we painted some light on the bridge.

Culloden Viaduct at night by Michael Carver, on Flickr

Gary_Macleod · 16 Aug 2015

excellent work Michael

LBJNBA · 16 Aug 2015

They are mostly a winter thing as its so dark all night

Great shot, been there a few times. What body and lens were you using?

windrunner · 17 Aug 2015

A D800 and 24-70mm F2.8.

Irishman · 18 Aug 2015

Very good. What software did you use to stack the images with?

windrunner · 18 Aug 2015

All done in photoshop using stacked layers and lighten blending mode.

doggel · 18 Aug 2015

Fabulous image. Sounds as though you had to do a lot of PP to produce it (I've never got on top of 'layers' though I tried hard with 'The Gimp'), but the result justifies all the effort you put in. That sky puts me in mind of a painting by Munch- fascinating!

Broken · 8 Sep 2015

wow!! such an amazing shot !!

mike_6480 · 8 Sep 2015

Excellent shot. Is that also a sunset in the background, just above the horizon? Kind of looks surreal!

dan_yell · 9 Sep 2015

Nice work - I really don't think I'd have the patience to do all the stacking malarkey!

As long as it gets dark and they are about you can see them a far as I know - they had a massive display on 27th August in Iceland (so miffed I visited the week after!), and I think they first spotted on 15th I think.

windrunner · 9 Sep 2015

mike_6480 said:
Excellent shot. Is that also a sunset in the background, just above the horizon? Kind of looks surreal!

Thanks - its not a sunset, its the light from some streetlights in the distance mixed with the aurora.

dan_yell said:
Nice work - I really don't think I'd have the patience to do all the stacking malarkey!

Its actually surprisingly easy. Leave the camera on continous shooting mode at 30 second exposures (I used a cheap remote with the shutter locked on). Import the files into photo shop as layers then one click to adjust the blending mode. Takes 2 minutes - quite cool when the result pops up on your screen.

dan_yell · 9 Sep 2015

windrunner said:
Thanks - its not a sunset, its the light from some streetlights in the distance mixed with the aurora.

Its actually surprisingly easy. Leave the camera on continous shooting mode at 30 second exposures (I used a cheap remote with the shutter locked on). Import the files into photo shop as layers then one click to adjust the blending mode. Takes 2 minutes - quite cool when the result pops up on your screen.

oh yes, that does sound easy. it always sounds like a lot of precise work and im not very precise