I had a real treat around midnight on Friday. We have had cloudy skies for a very long time but then it cleared up. I headed out to my dark spot where I usually do my astrophotography. It is about 20 km away from city lights so it is rather dark. My camera is old and the only lens I have for wide angle shots is the slow kit lens. So taking crisp shots of stars is without the question since I get startrails or really noisy images as a result. But I can turn that disadvantage to something good, startrail photos. When startrails is what I strive for I can take shots with a low ISO and a long shutter time and get a bit less noise.

Anyway, I live north of the Arctic circle in northern Sweden. It was about -28c when I took the 40 or so photos that I blended together in Photoshop. So what you see is all that happened on the sky for 20 mintures. The whole procedure took about 90 minutes with all the settings fiddeling and all the time the camera took for processing the shots. Although I had dressed really warm I had to walk around all the time to prevent starting to freese. I had a really good time watching the northern lights, shooting stars and listening to the radio while the camera did the work. These moments is really like nourishment for the soul. Even though I am reall happy with the result to me the chase is more important than the catch.

Also in cold weather radio controlled remote shutters is a bliss!

[Ex Finn.]

Nice result, thank you for sharing.
p.s. I use the free starstax for star-trails.
StarStaX - www.starstax.net

[bscott]

I really like this shot taken under extreme conditions.

[IgorZ]

Beautiful!

[eaglem]

Very well captured.

[robgski]

Fantastic, I hope to see this in person some day.

[Unregistered User 8]

Hi Smirf. A very good image. Thanks for the story of making this photograph too. -28 C is way too cold to be outside.!!!

[slowpez]

Stunning. Never tire of seeing the lights. TFS.

[Photogoof]

I had a real treat around midnight on Friday. We have had cloudy skies for a very long time but then it cleared up. I headed out to my dark spot where I usually do my astrophotography. It is about 20 km away from city lights so it is rather dark. My camera is old and the only lens I have for wide angle shots is the slow kit lens. So taking crisp shots of stars is without the question since I get startrails or really noisy images as a result. But I can turn that disadvantage to something good, startrail photos. When startrails is what I strive for I can take shots with a low ISO and a long shutter time and get a bit less noise.

Anyway, I live north of the Arctic circle in northern Sweden. It was about -28c when I took the 40 or so photos that I blended together in Photoshop. So what you see is all that happened on the sky for 20 mintures. The whole procedure took about 90 minutes with all the settings fiddeling and all the time the camera took for processing the shots. Although I had dressed really warm I had to walk around all the time to prevent starting to freese. I had a really good time watching the northern lights, shooting stars and listening to the radio while the camera did the work. These moments is really like nourishment for the soul. Even though I am reall happy with the result to me the chase is more important than the catch.

Also in cold weather radio controlled remote shutters is a bliss!

Stars AND the Northern Lights; wow!