Extreme Astronomy Turns into Art

Last night I tried taking some time lapse images of the stars. The moon wasn’t up yet and the sky was incredibly dark, So I had to use longer and longer exposures just to get any light registering. Normally I just could the seconds as I have my camera in B (bulb) Mode and hold my remote control button tight while I count 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds ….etc. Clunky but it works. Well I was getting several minute times required to I thought I’d use songs on my IPod to keep the time. the method worked well but the photos were very disappointing, with different colour cast and very noisy and hazy (all as expected given the long exposure times.

I quiet liked the colour casts I got looking in different directions, the blue is the nigh sky itself the yellow is a incandescant lamp inside (with the blinds drawn) and the orangy-red is a street light (a long way away). So I first removed as much noise as I could (using noiseware) increased the saturation to make the colours punchier and finally used the Dents filter in paint.net to overlay an interesting texture. The final collage below was made in picasa,

These are also available as screen wallpapers, from my free to download flickr screen wallpaper set.