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STORY: This second attempt at the first ever Star Trails Panorama, is shot on film 2 nights after my first digital attempt at star trails. See the digital version in the WWP section below left. The star trails' lengths are determined by the time of exposure and their proximity to the North Star. The closer to the North Star, the shorter the trails for a given time. The brightest trails are Lyra to the Northeast just rising over the mountain, Jupiter to the Southeast low in the sky, and Saturn high in the sky to the West. Northwest of the North Star, most of that grouping is Ursa Major, the Big Dipper. The idea for star trails came about in response to the WWP's theme of Atmosphere for the current event.
After the devastating amount of noise and inordinate number of exposures intrinsic and necessary in the digital first run, I returned to the lowest point in the Americas to try try again - on film!! This image is the result of two panoramas of night and day - one from 2am through astronomical twighlight, and the other, the basin floor just before dawn. The stars and cloudy night sky were shot for 20-25 min in each of five directions, and then after a short wait, the scene was shot again at about civil twighlight to provide both a desert floor aglow and to give me something to stitch together to keep the star trails aligned as faithfully as possible. At these short durations, the stars near the north star barely had any trail at all, and the 1/4 phase moon didn't provide enough glow on the salt bed. The moon set midway through, so to the West, I didn't have any ground barely at all. Then came the heart attacks trying to get the film processed and scanned just so and as faithfully and identically as possible. Would recommend drum scans, as the consumer/pro 35mm scanners, and professional Frontier, Noritsu and others either can't find the frame edges, are out of registration, or will have different levels of contrast, brightness, and hence noise differentials frame to frame. Good luck!! |
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