The Different Possibilities Of Star Trails Photography - Part One

As I announced in my last post, today is not about light painting, or is it? At least I'm not actively painting with light, but the Earth's rotation and the stars are doing the work for me. This post and next Sunday's post are about star trails and the options I used to photograph them.

This type of photography is actually easy. Set up and start the camera and then wait and enjoy the clear starry sky. If necessary, illuminate the surroundings if the moon is not bright enough.
But first you have to find the right location and, above all, get there with the equipment!
In my case, there is a suitable location about 1.8 km from our house. It is the Kaiser-Friedrich-Gedächtnishütte, a refuge that is also popularly known as the Schwedenschanze. It was built on the Bußberg in the Teutoburg Forest at an altitude of 306.2m.
A beautiful hike, with over 200 meters of altitude difference to overcome from our location. With 10-15 kg of luggage on your back, you quickly work up a sweat. At the top of the mountain, it is a lot cooler and windier than in the valley. At -5°C, you quickly cool down again. However, the view from up there over the Ravensberger Land compensated for the effort.

I had already scouted out the location for the tripod in daylight. I had already ridden my mountain bike up here at lunchtime and planned the picture with the help of the “PhotoPills” and “Viewfinder” apps.
So I set up the tripod at the planned location. I mounted the camera and the lens, including the lens heater, on the tripod. Now all I had to do was connect the interval timer to the camera and connect everything to the power bank. I set the interval release so that the camera exposes for 30 seconds and pauses for 3 seconds to save the file. The focus was set manually.
The camera was set to ISO 400; F4.

Now it was time to open the first bottle of beer. I sat down at a table behind the house with Geane, who accompanied me there. There we enjoyed the great view of the surrounding towns and the beautiful starry sky. Every now and then, a deer came close to our resting place. It rustled around in the bushes, but luckily the camera left the deer alone.

After about 2 hours, I had collected enough pictures to continue my work at home in the warm office. Before I stopped shooting, I illuminated the building with the Emisar D18. I also used a red and a blue color filter.
Then I packed everything up and we walked home.

A week earlier I had tried to photograph the Milky Way at this location. That failed despite the start tracker. The light pollution is simply too strong. You can see the result below. I'll show you what other ways I tried to capture the starlight on the camera chip here next week.
So stay tuned!