Astrophotography

At the meeting of the club on 18th September Andrew Alan, one of the countries top night sky photographers gave a presentation to members.  Andrew covered the what’s, where’s, when’s and how's of all aspects of night photography and illustrated his talk with fabulous photographs, many of them taken in his local area around Perth. 

The best time of the year to take Milky Way photos is August to October. The best place to go is one of Scotlands Dark Sky Parks, in Dumfrese and Galloway and the Cairngorms.  The best camera settings, a 60 -120 second exposure (using a skytracker mounted on your tripod), ISO up to 2000, aperture wide open.   To capture a meteor shower try Mid December when the most produtive shower, the Geminid is in action.  Noctilucent Clouds can be seen in the Summer and Orion, in the Winter.

Andrew recommended getting the ‘Clear Outside’ App designed for astronomers with an emphasis on predicting cloud cover, the ‘Celestron SkyPortal ‘App App to find out whats in the night sky and where to find them, and The Photographers Ephemeris App which will tell you when Sun and Moon rise and set occur and in what direction for anywhere in the world  It will also help you to work out what landmarks to include in your photo!  These Apps are free (upgrades are available at a cost).

After a tea break Andrew concentrated on taking photos of the Aurora. His amazing phptographs showed us why he is called on by VisitScotland , the BBC and others to add content to promotion campaigns.  Andrew expained how Auroras happen but summed it up in the more understandable phrase ‘there a lot of science going on up there’.  Importantly he told us how to use the internet to predict Auroras using Bz not KP information and how to go about taking Aurora photos.  

Images published courtesy of Andrew Alan, all rights reserved. See more of Andrew’s work at https://scotlandsnightsky.com/