I heard about the Dark Skies competition online and decided to try submitting a couple of photos to it - seemed like fun to try and improve my night sky photography, and my daughter was showing a lot of interest in the stars so I figured I could try and take her up a hill somewhere to get a good look at them while I took some photos. The trouble was just trying to find a good, clear night when she could have a slightly later bed time to do it, which was proving a bit of a struggle!
It was interesting to learn that the South Downs National Park is an International Dark Skies Reserve, with lots of places to stargaze. I'd already thought that Butser Hill would be a good place to go, and it is one of the best places for reduced light pollution according to the map they have.
Moonscape
The first photo was one I actually took from the back garden in February last year. I had bought myself a new telephoto lens and wanted to try it out, and on this evening the moon was full and particularly large and bright. I was really pleased with how this came out - I cropped the photo down a bit (it's a telephoto lens, not a telescope!), so the details as you zoom in more become a little rough. But you can see some really nice things on it, and I had a good time experimenting with different exposures and stuff like that to ensure it was bright enough to see the details but not overwhelmed by it.
Butser Hill
The deadline for the competition was 12th January, so by the time the start of the month came around and I hadn't managed to get any more photos taken I was quite keen, but the weather wasn't on my side! I drove home on a Friday evening and saw the sky was pretty clear so we all just jumped in the car and went for it. Unfortunately, as we drove up Butser Hill we found we were going into mist and visibility wasn't great. I was hoping it might clear up once we got to the top, but it didn't really. Actually, as we were up there (in the freezing cold, it was sitting at about zero degrees), more cloud started to roll in and the few stars we had been able to see at first were becoming obscured. We couldn't see much of anything as we looked out from the hill. The only thing was the moon, beaming brightly through the mist, and looking quite eerie above this skeletal tree in the car park.
So, I set my tripod up and tried to capture the moon shining above and through the tree. I messed about with the manual settings, varying the F-stop, exposure time and ISO number to get different effects. This was a really interesting challenge, to get enough light in to be able to see the tree, but not so much that the moon just became one big bright light with no definition at all. For one of the photos I found there was a 'bulb' setting for the Exposure time, which seemed to just keep going until I told it to stop... I probably let it have a couple of minutes before stopping it, and the brightness was amazing, able to see all the trees - the moon almost looked like the sun on a dreary day! It wasn't a great photo, but was interesting to see what the camera could do. Photos through the tree branches were interesting, but difficult to focus properly as you couldn't see anything until it had taken the photo.
Here are a few of the better / more interesting photos I decided not to submit to the competition:
This was the photo that I chose to submit, I think it got the right balance of light and dark, capturing the glowing moon through the mist quite nicely. Not the best photo in the world, but we had spent enough time up on the cold hill so I called it a night there and we got back home to warm up!
We'll see what the judges make of it 😊
