Dusk to Dawn, 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition

8 Photographing Star Trails

Back in the film era, the only way to capture the night sky without employing a telescope with a tracking mount was to open the shutter and leave it open for a very long time. During that long exposure, which could extend for hours, the stars would make graceful streaks across the film as the earth rotated. Although recent digital cameras can now capture the night sky as we see it, with stationary stars, it’s still lots of fun to create photos of star trails.

Alas, the simple technique that worked with a film camera generates unmanageable noise if you try it with a digital camera. The standard digital approach is to make many exposures with the shortest possible time interval between each exposure, stack the exposures ...