Milky Way Time Lapse over Morden Manitoba: Composite with Star Trails

[CJCA915]

I think the perpendicular streaks are probably airplanes...

[darethehair1]

@CJCA915 Yep, either that or satellites...

[CJCA915]

Very cool, though such a shame that it was ruined by that biblical stuff... which I think insults the beauty of nature.

[darethehair1]

@CJCA915 Glad you enjoyed it!  Sorry that I disagree with your conclusion, though -- pointing to the Artist doesn't take anything away from the artistry :)

[darethehair1]

@CJCA915 Hey, let's keep this feedback on the video, and off the ongoing battle between faith and non-faith. Science is our friend :) Have a great day!

[LivingForHisGlory]

I never tire of gazing at the beauty of God's creation...especially the beauty of a sunset/sunrise over the ocean & the beauty of a clear star-lit sky.

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Romans 1:20

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." 1 John 4:10

[WulfBand]

Oh No, the Earth is in a Wormhole :( Were all doomed because were gonna end up in Disney Studios :(

[darethehair1]

@WulfBand Funny stuff :)

[mamanestas]

Thank's I will join an astronomy hobby forum That is a great idea. I am using an EOS Rebel XS and just starting to get into the "astronomy"... Can't wait until I get a "Telescope" World look out :) or Look Out the world. lol

[darethehair1]

@mamanestas There are lots of great groups out there. I would recommend astronomyforum + dot + net, and cloudynights + dot + com (web addresses not allowed in comments) as examples of great forums. As you can see by this video, you don't even need a telescope to take pictures of the night sky :)

[mamanestas]

You must have amazing equipment. Thank you for sharing I am taking photo's of the Northern Star right now. :D

[darethehair1]

@mamanestas Thanks! Actually my photo equipment is very moderate -- much cheaper than a typical professional photographer would use. I encourage you to join one of the astronomy hobby forums and post your pics so others can see them :)

[andrewpolitano]

who in the hell are disliking this? probably those silly nikon owners. aw, wait, i shoot nikon...

but to disprove the myths about us, i do own a canon point/shoot as well as my D5100 lol :)

SICK vid!

[darethehair1]

@andrewpolitano I am not really sure why about 5% of the folks say they don't like it, but they certainly have the right to say so. Yes, I have both Nikon and Canon myself (in fact some of my videos were shot with my older Nikon). Glad you enjoyed the vid :)

[halo3master4000]

it look like a tree stump

[darethehair1]

@halo3master4000 I had to think a bit about what you meant by this, but you are correct -- the 'rings' look a bit like rings on a tree stump :)

[darethehair1]

@MyJustCauseChannel Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. You might want to check out some of more 'normal' astronomy videos as well :)

[rainerfilm]

how do you make it so that each star starts out as a dot and it ends up as a stripe? Or is this actually a Photoshop technique?

[darethehair1]

@rainerfilm I do not use Photoshop, since I run the Linux OS, but it is definitely an 'image processing' effect, where the 'bright' parts of one image are 'added' to the next, so that it accumulates -- which for moving stars turns them from 'dots' into 'stripes' :)

[JulianKooijmans]

is the middle point the pole star?

[darethehair1]

@JulianKooijmans Yes, sort of, but as mentioned in previous comments below, Polaris (the North Star) is NOT exactly aligned with the Earth's north/south rotation axis -- it is about 3/4 of a degree from that 'imaginary' point in the sky. However, from a super-wide-angle lens as used in these videos, that difference is very difficult to notice. In any case, part of my desire was to illustrate the too-slow-to-be-noticed nightly rotation that many people do not see :)

[TheDkminer]

fake



[darethehair1]

@TheDkminer Not sure what you mean by this. Yes, it is true that stars do not leave 'trails' like this in the sky, and that image processing was needed for this effect -- but those are real stars and real rotation and real timelapses :)

[BenmacBlog]

how on earth do you do this?

[darethehair1]

@BenmacBlog Well, you would have to read the other answers in the comments for a fuller explanation, but it is a combo of creating some timelapse videos, and then accumulating frames into successive ones to to create the star trails.

[robotek87]

Just amazing! I tried to do this in AE... no luck :( yet :P

[darethehair1]

@robotek87 Glad you like it! Extreme stuff like this requires manually setting the exposure, however. Maybe some day our cameras will be able to handle night skies without our intervention :)

[tH3bUdS]

@darethehair1 some one did this at a dry lake bed in Australia, and the two brightest stars showed in the sky and beacuse of the moon light it looked like the cracks in the lake bed were glowing. (i know that was a bad explanation but its on national geographic if you want to see it.)

[darethehair1]

@tH3bUdS I'll have to look for that picture -- but can you tell me which issue it is in?

[tH3bUdS]

@darethehair1 i dont remember but ill look for you

[AlienshateU]

Is Polaris still at the dead center or is it off a bit as pole shift advocates declare?

[darethehair1]

@AlienshateU Due to 'precession', the imaginary point in the sky that the earth's northern axis appears to rotate around changes over thousands of years. Right now, 'Polaris' is the closest visible star to that point -- but even it is about a 1/2 degree from the 'true' pole. It will be closest -- but not exactly on -- in the year 2100. For more info see 'Polaris' in Wikipedia. There is also info on 'Pole Shift' on Wikipedia, but I don't know anything about it :)

[AlienshateU]

@darethehair1 Crustal displacement or magnetic pole shift? Could there be a crustal displacement with an axis of rotation staying about the same?

[darethehair1]

@AlienshateU Sorry, this is outside of my sphere of astronomical/geological knowledge, and not related to my timelapse :) Don't confuse 'magnetic pole' with the 'celestial' pole. The 'wobble' (precession) of the Earth's axis probably is not influenced much by continental drift...

[cragzzz]

How do you do this mate?

[darethehair1]

@cragzzz Are you asking about the timelapse or the star trails? The 'timelapse' effect (in this case) is taking photos every 30 seconds (0.5 fps) but playing them back at 30 fps. The 'star trails' effect is a bit harder to explain -- basically I 'add' each photo to the ones before it -- so the star 'dots' turn into 'lines' instead. :)

[hyogen82]

@darethehair1 this is awesome..do you need a really clear sky? or will it work with just a few stars visible? I have a T1i too, & getting the same fisheye today.

May i ask what settings to use? like what ISO, aperture, shutter speed? also, i didn't know you could take a photo every 30 seconds...is that in the same menu where you can time your shutter for 10 seconds?

also for strong red and white lines for night traffic...what kind of settings should i use? thank you!

[darethehair1]

@hyogen82 Thanks! You have lots of questions :) The high ISO/long exposure will make the stars look brighter, but sometimes cloud movement adds an interesting effect. I think ISO was 3200, shutter was 30 seconds, and aperture was F/5.6 -- but you have to experiment! The T1i on its own cannot do 'intervalometer' functions like this -- that is why I use the 'SmaTrig2', but there are others you can buy. Sorry, but I do not know the answer to your last question. Let us see your videos soon!

[KoreanBCE]

so this is what time traveling looks like =D

[darethehair1]

@KoreanBCE Hey, never thought of that, but I guess it is sortof true! H.G. Wells anybody? :)

[lejoh7]

El Universo es magnifico, que cielo, que estrellas, woooooo!!!!

[darethehair1]

@lejoh7 Gracias! Estoy de acuerdo contigo! (from Google Translate)

[OhanGeorge]

Awesome work!!! Very talented! #Hollywood, Ca

[darethehair1]

@OhanGeorge Thanks! Actually there are people that do a much better job than I do out there that blow my socks off. Search for other 'time lapse' videos and you will see what I mean :)

[fenbogle]

HAIL HIM.

[bitsstib]

i think it was a photo, how do u make the video then? lots of photos stacked together ?

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib Well, a better term would be 'joining' the individual photos together into a 'video'. In this sense, a 'timelapse' video is just like a 'regular' video, except that the exposure length and/or gap between the photos has been adjusted such that a great deal of 'real' time has been compressed into a shorter time (use Google to search for the term 'timelapse' for more info). The term 'stacking' means putting photos 'on top' of each other (not the same).

[bitsstib]

@darethehair1 yes. i got that :) thanks for the correction. so how many hours it took ?

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib See earlier postings for the answer -- this 'composite' video was composed of multiple shorter videos on separate nights, the total time taking individual photos was about 15 hours... :)

[bitsstib]

@darethehair1 15 hrs... omg... :P and what's the software for joining frames as a video?

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib At the end of the video it mentions the software used to make this. In particular, 'ffmpeg' was used to join the images together into an 'mp4' video. This is a 'CLI' (command line interface) app, but very powerful and ideal for making one's own 'scripts' to do stuff like this -- rather than being encumbered by one with a 'GUI' (graphic user interface). Most Linux software is free, like this is. I think 'ffmpeg' is also available for Windo0ws and Mac too :)

[bitsstib]

@darethehair1 .. ahh i knw ffmpeg... i used it in my php code once :)

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib Another possibility would have been 'mencoder', also a CLI-type app. Once the right parameters are figured out, doing this photo 'joining' is trivially easy. In fact, this whole 'wide field' astrophotography is one of the easiest and least expensive techniques of all -- you just need a camera with low-noise high-ISO, a tripod, and some sort of shutter triggering device. Even some 'point-and-shoot' digital cameras are getting good high ISO abilities...

[bitsstib]

@darethehair1 ok.. how many sort of shutter triggering device are out there ? can i make one? :P whats the cheapest?

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib As the expression goes, "Google is your friend". What you are looking for is called an 'intervalometer'. What you can get/need depends on the make/model of the camera, of course. For Canon DSLRs, look for 'Phottix' products (TR90 $65?). For homemade, I have a 'SmalTrig2' (as the videos say) but I had it made for it -- it does WAY more than just timelapse. Canon-brand stuff is probably over $100 (!). A project called 'Magic Lantern' firmware replacement also includes this...

[bitsstib]

@darethehair1 ... yea ofcourse i know goog is there... but this info is better ;) thanks :)

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib Hopefully with the brief info I can give you in 500-characters-or-less, I will have pointed you in the right direction. One idea I did not mention is, if you can, to control shutter-firing via software, with camera attached to computer. However, few manufacturers allow this. Canon does this very well on their DSLRs. I could use 'gphoto2' (Linux-only?) to do this, but I use SmaTrig2 instead. My 'webcam' is an old Nikon Coolpix taking a pic every minute for *years* now.

[darethehair1]

@bitsstib Well, a better term would be 'joining' the individual photos together into a 'video'. In this sense, a 'timelapse' video is just like a 'regular' video, except that the exposure length and/or gap between the photos has been adjusted such that a great deal of 'real' time has been compressed into a shorter time (use Google to search for the term 'timelapse' for more info). The term 'stacking' means putting photos 'on top' of each other (not the same).

[rathofdoom]

4 people got their equipment jacked :/

[darethehair1]

@rathofdoom Maybe, not sure...

[FHomeBrew]

How (if at all) would a satellite show up on this film?

[darethehair1]

@FHomeBrew Well, during each exposure/frame -- which lasts 30 seconds -- a sufficiently-bright satellite would leave a 'streak' trail, appearing in the video as a sudden 'line'. I think that this video has some of those.

[MegaDash8]

how long did u take for recording?

[darethehair1]

@MegaDash8 Well, this is three separate time-lapse videos joined together. From the stats at the beginning/end, it was 1800 frames @ 30 seconds each, so it was about 15 hours of taking individual pictures. That is one of the challenges of time-lapse video -- in order to make just 1 second of video, it takes 30 images (for me on this lens/exposure this is 15 minutes) -- you need a LOT of images to make anything long enough and interesting enough to view :)

[GOJOSH69]

@darethehair1 You make is sound like to took a 15 hour shift slaving over your camera. I hope you at least had your timer remote controller do the slaving for you. Really neat piece!

[darethehair1]

@GOJOSH69 LOL! I guess it does sound like that! Actually, as mentioned in the video(s), I used a 'SmaTrig2' to trigger the camera for me for hours at a time, while I slept comfortably in my bed (well, slightly nervous leaving my stuff unattended outside my own yard). Three videos was manipulated and joined to make this one -- a single night video would only be about 30 seconds in length. Lately, I have been using my SmaTrig2 to do single-image photography rather than video i.e. 'stacking'.

[StolenNikes]

i wish i had a good camera

[darethehair1]

@StolenNikes Well, the good news is that 'good' cameras (DSLR?) are always dropping in price over time. The bad news is that the 'really good' ones are $2500+, which very few can afford...

[ThePurePretztail]

wow, this is amazing ! :O

[darethehair1]

@ThePurePretztail Thanks! An interesting effect, but I prefer the more 'natural' timelapses myself :)

[dannydashsavage]

Awe inspiring

[darethehair1]

@dannydashsavage Glad you like it!

[dannydashsavage]

@darethehair1 Was wondering about this video...do you think that the stars reflect an existance of a God and if so why?

[darethehair1]

@dannydashsavage Hello! Yes, but it would be better to discuss this offline :)

[BDaDennis]

When you look at the law of nature, it says something like God is imposdible.

Luckily there are people who look further than that :)

[darethehair1]

@BDaDennis Actually I believe that the so-called 'teleological argument' claims that even nature itself suggests a 'God' explanation :)

[necrodeath144]

@Everyone - It doesn't get more tedious than arguing about philosophy in a youtube comment section.

[darethehair1]

@necrodeath144 I agree that Youtube is a silly place for 'argument'. My videos and inspiration are meant to be appreciated as they are :)

[BDaDennis]

@darethehair1 ah ok :)

[zygmund18]

great!!!

[darethehair1]

@zygmund18 Thanks! Personally I like the night sky time lapses without 'video effects' like this one has (including my own), but this appears to be popular :)

[zygmund18]

@darethehair1 I think that u know something about timelapses, so can you check out my timelapse at my channel?

[darethehair1]

@zygmund18 I watched your 'driving car' timelapse. Neat! I have always wanted to do a 'car driving' one with a webcam and computer, but the scenery around here isn't all that interesting.

[nameno1elsehas]

and now I finally understand the basic concept behind astronomy, and it's pretty damn sick

[darethehair1]

@nameno1elsehas Yea, I am a 'visual' person myself, and timelapse is a great technique to 'see' movement that is too slow to discern on its own -- and having the stars leave a 'trail' goes further to showing us the the orientation of the sky relative to our particular location :)

[legitvid77]

All praise and Glory to our God and King The Lord Almighty! The Great Creator! How can people say there is no God??? Have you ever seen an explosion at a brick factory build a house??? I don't think so!!! Praise the Lord!!! :D

[drmonsta]

@legitvid77 At one point in time a brick factory probably underwent a demolition stage, using TNT, to make room for a house to rest upon, which a group of humans built.

Great video, I love the time lapse effect you scripted!

[darethehair1]

@drmonsta Thanks! I don't see myself doing a 'star trails' scripted special effects video again anytime soon, but I was pleased at how relatively easy it was to use free/open-source utilities to do what I wanted :)

[drmonsta]

@darethehair1 No problem! I'm always amazed at the capabilities and power of open sourced software, even after using lots of it for years

[darethehair1]

@drmonsta Cool! Another person that realizes that not everything that is worthwhile has to cost something :)

[MrBerndhorst]

what ISO seting was used in this video? you seem get very little noise and very bright pictures considering that your shooting at f5.6

[darethehair1]

@MrBerndhorst I am pretty sure that I used ISO 3200 for all the sequences used to make this composite. I had experimented to find the highest I could 'get away with'. I would love to do ISO 6400 or higher -- and if I had been a bit more patient I think the Canon T2i/T3i could have given that to me. The Canon 5D Mark II would be super great, but totally out of my budget. It would also help to get to even darker skies, but for that I would have to travel/camp away from towns...

[MrBerndhorst]

@darethehair1 have you considered using a faster, maby somwhat less wideangle, lens? i have tried something but the only equipment i have is lumix g1 and the kit lens so the best i could mange to acomplish are some kinda neat stils of stars with a smal hint of the milkyway but im planning to get a way faster lens (maybe 1.4 vs 3.5-5.6 for the kit lens so that makes for a factor 6.25-16 decrease in exposure time which will realy help as i can hardly go much abvo ISO400 without massive noise)

[darethehair1]

@MrBerndhorst Yes, I have considered using a 'prime' 50mm f/1.7 lens from an old SLR (though 50mm acts like an 80mm on the DSLR), but my guess is that the tradeoff of brighter images is compensated by a matching reduction in allowed exposure time i.e. instead of a 30s exposure for the 8mm lens (before unwanted star trails develop) is similar to a 5s exposure for a 50mm lens (know what I mean?). Nevertheless, I do intend to try it sometime :)

[MrBerndhorst]

@darethehair1 hm yes i understand the problem and i dont realy see a way around it except for using a both wider and faster lens. the problem then is that the only lenses that are both wide and fast, that i can afford, are cheap cctv lenses for c mount wich will probably vignett like crazy but maybe ill try it anyway^^

[MrBerndhorst]

@darethehair1 so i did some quick calculations and as it turns out ypu will get about a factor 5 decrease in Field of view when using 50mm vs. 8mm in bot axis but having f1.4 (1.7)instead of 5.6 is about a factor 16 (11) increas in light so you should be able to get brighter pictures with the same amount of star trails or less nois for the same brightnes

[darethehair1]

@MrBerndhorst Thanks for doing the math, I just never got around to doing it myself :) One thing to keep in mind is that shooting 'full aperture' is not typically the 'sharpest' lens setting. Thus, I shoot f/5.6 on the Samyang instead of f/3.5 (wide open). Likewise, you might need to 'stop down' a f/1.4 (or f/1.7) lens a stop or two as well. BTW, I notice that an 8mm fisheye is available for your camera -- but it is fairly expensive compared to the Samyang :(

[darethehair1]

@MrBerndhorst Just as a follow-up, I have read a few tests/reviews of the Samyang 8mm that (unfortunately) confirm that f/3.5 (wide open aperture) is not recommended. Instead, f/5.6 or f/6.7 is suggested. I did a small test myself, and can confirm this. I would love to shoot night stuff at f/3.5, but now I can see f/6.7 is the best and f/5.6 (what I use) is a bit of a compromise...

[SinishaTheScoper]

i see Milky way just on one Footage...Anyway Great star trails! Me with my Camera can only see sirius & some stars from orion...

[Jellistegrotenhuis]

0:30 falling star on the right ?

[darethehair1]

@Jellistegrotenhuis I am actually not sure. My initial guess was an artificial satellite instead. With the 'smearing' effect of taking 30-second-long photos, it can be tricky to judge :)

[Teghead]

I'd love someone to make a video of the celestial poles where the stars remain fixed and the foreground of earth trails.

[darethehair1]

@Teghead I agree! I would like to try something like that myself sometime, but it is a lot more difficult i.e. you need a stable telescope mount with a clock drive and good polar alignment.

[loopz321]

wow what the fck this is amazing!

[bigsky780]

Nice work.

[darethehair1]

@bigsky780 Thanks! My stuff pales in comparison to some others, but I wanted to try it myself. Now I am anxious to try some other techniques when summer arrives.

[bigsky780]

@darethehair1 Keep at it you just get better and better.

[retepvosnul]

Nice photography, bad biblical citation.

[darethehair1]

@retepvosnul Thanks! I hope to do more of this timelapse stuff once it gets warm again. Not quite sure what you mean by 'bad', but the night sky is just one of those things that creates a sense of awe in me, and I find some of the Psalms expressing that very well :)

[retepvosnul]

@darethehair1 Poetry written by men who didn't know what they were looking at perhaps expresses "awe", but the awe you are experiencing is more eloquently and accurately expressed by the likes of Hawking or Sagan.

I might go for a Camera-axe kit for this sort of job. RIght know I use a NXT cube to control my SLR.

[darethehair1]

@retepvosnul That 'camera-axe' device looks interesting! Can you provide a reference for that NXT device? The SmaTrig2 does everything that I need right now :)

[retepvosnul]

@darethehair1 the NXT is a lego brick with an ARM processor that can be programmed in C(ish). You can connect motors and sensors to it. I use it to build pano robots and such.

[darrenwouldgo]

this is incredible!

[darethehair1]

@darrenwouldgo Thanks! I was inspired by other similar videos I had seen, and wanted to see if I could do something similar. Taking the many thousands of pictures to do a time lapse like this has had the down side of prematurely aging the life of my camera, though :)

[tacticalshroom]

Stop-motion?

[darethehair1]

@tacticalshroom Well, 'time lapse' is similar to 'stop motion', but not quite the same. With 'stop motion', a person moves objects between frames and it ends up looking like the objects are moving on their own. With 'time lapse', no one moves anything -- the motion is totally natural. These star 'time lapse' videos just show the natural movement of stars 'sped up' a lot. The 'star trails' effect on this particular video is just an additional 'special effect'.

[tacticalshroom]

@darethehair1 yeah, you just keep taking multiple pictures and turn em into a video correct?

[darethehair1]

@tacticalshroom Yes, but this particular video is not a good example of a simple 'time lapse' animation -- you should view some of my other videos instead for that purpose. What is unique about this one is that when the 'movie' is being constructed, the star images are allowed to 'overlap' and 'accumulate' over time -- creating the 'star trails' effect. In a regular time lapse, each image totally replaces the previous one. By the way, there are much better videos than my own out there :)

[dilegentelectron]

never mind just found it at the end of the video .

[darethehair1]

@dilegentelectron Thanks! Yes, setting the ISO/aperture/shutter is all dependent on the focal length of the lens being used. With the fisheye lens used, I could afford to use a long shutter speed (30 s), but the slow lens (f/5.6) itself forced me to do so. I would like to try a brighter lens (say f/1.8) but that also means a longer focal length, and shorter exposure time to reduce motion blur. The ISO always stays around 1600 -- the max I could use without introducing bad heat noise.

[dilegentelectron]

great job. How did you set the aperture and ISO plz?

[dickinsm]

fantastic time lapse !

Ive been doing my own time lapses with my canon 500d

how did you manage to animate the star trails ???

[darethehair1]

@dickinsm Hopefully you will post your own time lapses. It would be great to see more 500D ones! Without going into a lot of detail over how the star trails were animated, for me it was important that I could use various Linux 'utility' apps (e.g. "ImageMagick") and my own simple scripts to do this: basically 'adding' bright pixels to a previous image to make a new one -- until I had a whole new set of images to assemble into a video clip (using ''FFMpeg"). Equivalent in WIndows? Unknown.

[Waldbrand]

great. awesome. i need a smaTrig2 now :)

[darethehair1]

@Waldbrand Thanks for the comments! Yep, I like my "SmaTrig2". Not only does it allow me to do this 'time lapse' stuff, but it also has a bunch of other functionality that I haven't even tested yet :)

[IlluminusQ]

great upload

[darethehair1]

@IlluminusQ Thanks! Since I had spent so much time figuring out how to convert my timelapse videos into 'star trail' ones, I figured I would upload this composite one -- even though there isn't any more 'new' material. :)

[IlluminusQ]

@darethehair1 well you did a good job. . .this needs a lot more views. Hopefully one day when i get a nice dslr or camcorder i'll be able to do projects like this :)

[darethehair1]

@IlluminusQ With the zillions of videos available on YouTube, I am surprised if even a handful of people run into my videos :)

The 'secrets to success' with night time lapses are: high ISO/low noise camera, automated shutter triggering, lots of batteries (or AC power adapter), and patience.