The night sky can be a glorious sight on a clear night. If you have ever seen it in a part of the country unaffected by local street lights or the light pollution from a nearby city, a sky full of stars is a thing of wonder.
In my part of Sussex, there is always the orange glow of Brighton on the southern horizon. The city itself is hidden behind the South Downs, but nevertheless signals its presence after dark and lightens the sky somewhat in that direction. When there is no moon, the southern sky can still look good, but it's a compromised view.
If I look northwards from my house, the sky is darker, but still nothing like the intense blackness one can find out in sparsely-populated countryside, a blackness in which thousands of visible stars can be seen, some of them coloured red, yellow or blue, depending on how hot they are, how large they are, and how near they are. To the unaided eye, they are all just points of light, being far too distant to show a disc, as the Moon and the other planets in the Solar System can. Even so, fascinating to observe, although sometimes hard on the neck, and an occupation to chill you to the bone on winter nights.
I don't possess a telescope, nor even a pair of binoculars, but now and then I attempt to take photos of the night sky, which I can then study at high magnification on my laptop. I had another go earlier in the week. I popped Lili on my tripod, setting the focus to infinity, and setting the shutter speed for an automatic time exposure, meaning that I was letting the camera work out the appropriate ISO, and to time the exposure accordingly. The focal length was of course fixed at 23mm (equivalent to 35mm in full-frame terms).
As it happened, Lili's shutter opened for 1 second with all three of my shots. The ISO however was 1,000 for one, and 3,200 for the other two. Why this variation? After all, the shot using an ISO of only 1,000 was aimed at the darker sky to the north-west. Well, the other two shots, taken with an ISO of 3,200, included bits of Jackie and Kevin's house next door and I think that Lili was trying hard to get their roof and the top of their campervan properly exposed in preference to the night sky. So she upped the ISO sensitivity.
I should have chosen the ISO manually, and not left it on automatic. A high ISO value is like increasing the volume on a TV or radio or speaker - the higher you make it, the greater the likelihood of output distortion. In photo terms, this means 'noise' - speckles and patterns in the background of the picture which progressively smudge the detail captured, and alter the colour fidelity.
All this said, I wasn't disappointed with Lili's first foray into celestial photography. It was a casual, spur-of-the-moment affair that turned out rather well.
Next time I'll take more pains, and also do it later in the evening (my shots were grabbed around 8.00pm). I may live in a village, but there is still too much light pollution from nearby street lamps. But these are turned off after midnight, and that's the better time to get out the tripod and have a go. Although (a) even in summer it might be damned cold; and (b) it's very creepy out of doors, standing around in the darkness! I might in fact leave the next attempt to my first caravan holiday, on my usual farms in the West County. I should get much better results in those deep-countryside locations, and for some reason won't feel so exposed to the kind of midnight prowlers you think of in Sussex, whether they are hedgehogs or foxes or mad axemen. The moos and baas of cows and sheep on farms are much more reassuring!
Anyway, what did I get?
First up, a shot of the constellation Cassiopeia, unmistakably W-shaped. This was the shot taken facing north-west at only ISO 1,000, which in theory should make it a better-quality shot. (Click on any of the following to enlarge them - they are much clearer that way)
