Interesting Photo of the Day: 3 Hours of Star Trails

Have you tried your hand at astrophotography? If you can find a dark night sky with stars present, try for a long exposure. You may reveal more stars that aren’t visible to the naked eye! Photographer Alexander Pulliam used his photography expertise to line up multiple exposures for this stunning image:

star trailing astrophotography long exposure foreground background

“Three Hours of Star Trailing in Great Sand Dunes National Park” by Alexander Pulliam (Via Reddit. Click image to see full size.)

A finished piece such as this one requires patience, proper camera settings, and a bit of editing time. Pulliam captured hundreds of long exposures and then used two photo editing apps to bring it all together. Would you have that kind of patience for one photograph?

For the star trails, he used 270 of his 25-second exposures at f/3.5 and ISO 3200. His reasoning for the higher ISO and shorter exposures was that he plans on using them for a timelapse. For the foreground, he used a single 180-second exposure at ISO 800. Normally for a star trail, he would use a lower ISO and longer exposure times. Either way, his settings worked great and were able to capture the Earth’s revolution above a still shot of the sand dunes, mountains, and orange glow of Colorado Springs. Amazing work!

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