Last night was the third clear night in a row. And, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute, the last one before I leave Bønnerup. In stead of just hanging around on the summer house balcony I packed my gear and walked north towards the sea. I wanted to shoot Vega, the fifth brightest star in the night sky, and it hangs very low over the northern horizon this time of year. There is a small harbour not too far from the summer house and I walked all the way to the end of the western pier. It was freezingly cold but also wonderfully dark. I could even see the outline of the Milky Way.
I pointed my camera at Vega, focused and started shooting a series of images. Because Vega is relatively far from Polaris it moves quite fast across the sky. I wanted each image to show nearly point like stars, so I only exposed each image for 30 seconds.
For some reason all the images came out wrong. Or at least not as I had intended. The camera seemed less sensitive to the light, and increasing the ISO did not help that much. Also, the colors are very dark. I do not know why. I hope it has something to do with the weather conditions that night and is not a permanent problem. I am a bit worried about frost damage from the night before.
I noticed the problems on my first couple of test images but I decided to continue. I took about 60 exposures before the cold got too intense and I hurried home. Turns out that last night was one of the coldest nights in the past 12 years.
I used Photoshop to stack the images as usual. But this time I did something a little different. I have seen people use Morse code to write their names in the stars and thought: why not let Vega write its own name? This is why I wanted short exposures, images where the stars are dots in stead of dashes.
Despite the exposure and color problems I think the result is pretty cool. You can really see the different colours of the stars. Vega is of course the bright white star in the middle, and the orange shimmer near the horizon is light from the city Aalborg reflected by cirrostratus clouds. Come another clear night I will try again, maybe with a different star.