Another Time-Lapse of the Milky Way

Some readers of my blog may recall the Time-Lapse Movie of the Milky Way I shot last year in the Sierras. Not to outdo myself, but I had to try again. This time, I spent a week in Idaho, and gathered this series of time-lapse images of the milky way. I then strung the best bits together into a 2.5 minute movie, which I posted on my YouTube account. (Note that's a real thunderstorm mid-way through.)



For some reason, the video box shown here only showed the regular (low-res) frame. You can go to the video page directly and click on the "HQ" (high quality) button in red to see the movie in all its glory.

Time-lapse movies of Milky Way

I spent a week in King's Canyon/Sequoia National Park a couple weeks ago (during the new moon), and came away with two surprisingy amazing time-lapse movies of the Milky Way galaxy traveling across the night sky. You may want to set your browser to full screen for best effect. (These are flash animations of sequential frames. See tech details below.)

www.danheller.com/kings-canyon-star-trails-1



www.danheller.com/kings-canyon-star-trails-2



Each exposure was 30 seconds at f2.8 at ISO 3200 (Canon 1DsMark3, EF 16-35mm f2.8L set at 16mm). The trees were very dimly lit by a nearby hotel (2nd photo), thereby making their perceived illumination comparable to the stars. I used a Canon interval time/cable release to shoot each shot successively for about 2 hours per sequence. Once the pictures were shot, I strung them together using FotoMagico into a quicktime movie. I then imported the movie into Adobe Flash to create the web page for each movie clip. You can see more photos from the entire trip here: http://www.danheller.com/kings-canyon