About Last Night...

I had used my camera to take pictures of the night sky and was impressed with the results. The camera was still new and I didn't change the ISO sensitivity. Even with the speed set to ISO 200 even dim stars showed up well in the long exposures.

I thought that if I increased the sensitivity I could take short exposures of the night sky that would leave the stars as dots rather than streaks. It works pretty well.

We were having a period of cloud-free nights. But the clouds decided to move back in the night I decided to try to make my first movie of stars. Moving clouds are a good subject for a time-lapse movie so this wasn't a disaster.

In the first attempt at a video of stars moving across the sky you get a very brief glimpse of the head of Scorpius. Then the clouds completely cover the scene.

I had set the camera's ISO sensitivity to 3200 and took 5 second exposures at 6 second intervals (meaning the shutter was closed for one second between shots). It's played back at 15 frames per second.

The rooms you see through the windows are lit only by the light in the hall. The trees are lit by street lights and house lights. The clouds are lit by Escondido. The stars are lit by nuclear fusion.

This didn't satisfy my desire to watch the stars move across the sky. I made another video another night. This time I pointed the camera to the north. You get to see the Big Dipper rotating around Polaris. A couple of airplanes fly across the scene.

I should have checked Heavens-Above before I made this video. It turns out that the satellite Lacrosse 3 was making an appearance in last few frames. It rises from the horizon and crosses the Dipper's handle. If I had checked for appearances of satellites I would have let it keep taking pictures and captured its whole pass. That's a project for another day!

The Big Dipper video was made with the same settings as the clouds covering Scorpio.