Second attempts and lessons learned

Before leaving Bali for Singapore, I wanted to have another go and take some more shots from the beach. It's a couple of days since the full Moon and so the moonrise time was later in the evening, providing a nice window after sunset and before moonrise when the skies would hopefully be darkest.

I'm sure that ideally, you'd want a moonless night and have a good few hours after sunset and before sunrise, but I'm not worrying too much about that now. It's nice to see that astrophotography isn't difficult even in less-than-perfect conditions.

So, off we went to find a nice dark bit of beach to shoot from. The tide was out and we'd just sat and watched the last of the pastel sunset colours drain from the evening sky to the west, over the Indian ocean. Together with the warmth of a Balinese summer and a refreshing sea breeze you so often have in Bali, it was a beautiful evening.

I picked a spot away from the resorts, although it's impossible not to have some bright lights around in this location. We were just north of Denpasar airport, the runway of which juts out over the ocean, providing a great view of airliners coming in to land on the island.

It was at this point I learned a valuable lesson when preparing for shooting the skies - check your equipment before you leave your house! (or in my case, hotel room). I'd gone and left the tripod mount in my room which would make taking 30 second exposures pretty challenging.... back off to the hotel room I went to collect the offending square of plastic.

As it turned out, it was probably a good thing I was another 30 minutes before taking shots. The sky was noticeably darker and the Moon still wasn't up in the east, both of which are good things when it comes to astrophotography!

I tried a few shots in portrait and landscape, the best of which is shown below. The light pollution adds a ncie colouring effect to the lower part of the picture, and there are some light trails from a town off in the distance - I assume this is a spotlight of some sort. You can also see the fire-like trail of an airliner coming in to land during the exposure.

Second night at Kuta - getting out before moonrise helped.

As you can see, you can just about make out the Milky Way. I'd planned it a little better this time and figured out exactly where it would be setting. I set up my camera to point in the right direction using both a compass and using the star constellations that my sky map showed fell within the Milky Way. A great skymap is available at http://www.skymaps.com/skymaps/ - you need to choose the one suitable for your region.

Example Skymap from skymaps.com

I was on a west facing beach, with the airport to the south of me, so I knew from the skymap (shown above) the Milky Way (the blue area on the skymap) should be just a few degrees west of south. Being from the UK, I'm not familiar with these star constellations, but I could see the Crux would be a perfect marker and it's easy to identify in the sky. I was easily able to find that in the sky to the south, and I used it to aim my shot.

I think the better preparation and planning paid off, and is evident in the better quality photo compared to my first attempts.

Next, I plan to wait for some moonless nights in Singapore in a couple of weeks time, and try taking some shots over famous Singaporean landmarks.