Railway to the centre of the Galaxy

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the next train is leaving platform earth in …

Following on from the previous night Star Trail session (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/7dfL8PdWNbg), this time I opted for more data, like any engineer, more data is never a bad thing – this set of trails was over the space of 5 or so hours and included the moon rising in the early morning.

Its very interesting to see how the AutoWB deals with the scene as the light changes over the night, over the 5 hours there was about 4 really significant changes in the white balance, all which would have been easily sorted out if I had set a fixed WB. In the end it actually makes little or no difference to the actual trail set since alot of that data actually gets cancelled out.

Techie stuff
331 images stacked together using the statistics method in Adobe PS CC and yep it takes awhile
This time I shuffled the foreground shot to get things to line up and fullfill the iniital vision of the tracks leading right into the tip of the galaxy. This time I changed the shutter to a bit long 55 or so seconds, really this makes little difference but just meant things ended up pretty bright, I actually had to darken the sky considerably to get the trails to stand out the way I wanted.

D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 55.6 seconds (331 shots)
ISO: 3200
out front – long metal things commonly referred to as railway tracks.

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

32 thoughts on “Railway to the centre of the Galaxy”

  9. You could not have lined this up any better, +Gerard Blacklock! Very Nicely done. And who said you should not have moonlight in an astrophotography shot any way, hey? Excellent work!
    Congratulations! Your photo has been selected for display on http://www.besttopphotographer.com as Photo Of The Day for August 7
    It might take a few days before your photo shows up on the site. Don't miss the opportunity to check out your photo on our website.
    Thank you, enjoy your day!
    Hendrik Ebber

  15. Gerald its the craziest thing that appears during your processing. ….Stunning results…so its the morning pic I see here…In other words this is morning after …due to the light on the grass..super!

  32. Sorry it takes me so long to get back and respond, thankyou all for the comments and plusses, much appreciated.
    +andy monet
    +Gwen Sutton
    +Souri Sengdara
    +Calvin Goetz (thanks mate)
    +Stuart Adams
    +Kära Cathryn (glad you like it)
    +Ben Wesley (c'mon man where's your sense of adventure..? 😉 )
    +Mike Disbury
    +Best Top Photographer Group and +Hendrik Ebber (exactly, nothing wrong with a bit of moonage in the shot: )
    +sophie DIDIER
    +Pieter Pretorius
    +Tom Crews
    +Saurabh Gupta
    +Dave Clendenan
    +mary g Cadigan (thankyou for the kind words!)
    +Linda Stokes 🙂 thanks mate.
    +farah godoy
    +Glen Anderson
    +Trentino Priori
    +Rodney Campbell
    +Alota Bachata
    +Ricardo Da Cunha
    +Alba Clerd
    +BTP Editor's Choice (Best Top Photographer's page)
    +Photo Mania Australia
    +Christophe Agathon
    +Austin Bisso
    +Joseba Ibarbia
    and
    +Phillip Tyson

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