I've been fascinated by stars and astronomy ever since my childhood and to capture any celestial activity with my camera has been a dear dream. Every time there's news about any meteor shower or eclipse or a super moon...yes...I've been out starring at the night sky.
And this time I prepared myself to capture some Star Trails - the continuous paths created by the stars captured during long-exposure photography. The resulting photos are so hypnotic, nothing less than magic itself!
So here I was, fixing my Canon Powershot G7x Mark II to a tripod and ready for a really long night!
The first two images below was to adjust the camera angle and to understand the curve path that the star movements were making.
Once all set, I gave it a good 60 minutes on its own for long exposure.
Although I would've wished for myself to be on a hill top somewhere over a much darker sky but for now it was me on a balcony.
I was thrilled to see how remarkable the star trails looked in just 60 minutes. The best part about that night was that there was news of intermittent meteor showers and I think I captured one such in the image. Look for left bottom of the above image just under the balcony railing, I think it's one such meteor :)
Can't describe the feeling to have captured something so amazing and unreal! It was nothing less than a dream coming true.
So I wanted to give it another go and this time I had it capture the movement for almost 120 minutes and here is how it looked...
Wondering what those dots are at the left? I kept thinking the same...what've I captured? What could it have been?
For once I thought, I was so lucky to have captured the Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink satellites that were also passing over the London at the same time while I had my camera pointed to the sky, but...
Later I realized I wasn't that lucky enough. It more looked like a helicopter might have passed through the sky...well...it still looks stunning, isn't it?
But how was I so sure about it being a helicopter? Well...by looking at another such attempt of shooting the star trails from a different angle. This time I was very sure, it was a chopper passing by and the similar dots appeared in the previous image.
I still love how the long-exposure image here picked up the helicopter's movement in the sky. This will remain one of my favorite images as it captures both the natural and the unnatural events together :)