Lights out. (Last Week's Favorite Photos Part 1)
I LOVE stars. Okay, most people do. Unfortunately, for those of us that don't live in the Australian outback, 500 miles away from the next light source, the necessity of humankind for illumination equals that for enlightenment, squashing that for watching the stars. Let alone taking pictures of it. So, when a bush fire (sounds kind of outback-ish, doesn't it?) ate through a vital electric line, the city went wonderfully dark at sundown. So, who do you think spent way too long on the rooftop playing with ISO and shutter time? Yours truly. Boy, did I have fun!
This is the sunset that day. There are still a few lights - the hospital is close, and the fire station, and those have generators.
This is a straight to the sky picture. If I remember correctly, 1600 ISO and 16 seconds shutter time. It's a little bit blurry, but I'm still mesmerized by how many stars were captured.
Same picture, but less shutter time. I think this is an 8 second one. You can see there: Scorpion, parts of it. Kind of in the lower middle is the body. Look up a picture of it, and you'll see. The red-ish dot on the side is the heart of the scorpion, Antares.
I had to improvise a little to get pictures at an angle. I don't have a tripod or something that helps with that, so I used pegs (Wäscheklammern). The results were remarkable. I was quite surprised by my cellphone's capabilities. The big star is not a star - it's the Venus, if I'm not mistaken.
On the right side, you can see the cross of the south I think. Somewhere around there should be Alpha and Beta Centauri, but I'm really not good at stars.
Cool extra - there's a satellite flying by, you can see the line when going upward from the palm, a little higher than Venus.
Orion at your service! This one is towards the other direction. Wasn't easy to get it. Most of the blur in front of the lights is caused by the omnipresent smoke. So many wild fires...
Honestly, I'm not sure what's milky way and what's smoke in this one. There should be the Scorpion again. But as mentioned, I'm not good at identifying. Feel free to use those pictures to draw by stars and let me know!
The few light sources that were there did quite the spectacle to everything. Again, smoke from fires. I hope it rains, soon.
People helped themselves out with candles. This is a nice neighborhood store, were I buy frequently because they're awesome people and I rather spend 10c more on them then giving my money to a blood sucking supermarket chain. Plus, they're open late.
That's the last from that night. I have a lot more great pictures, not related to that wonderful night, which I will post in a different one. I'm tired now, and will have to work a lot these days, so I hope you forgive that I break it into two.
As always, any feedback and especially tips and tricks are very welcome! As long as it's not AI generated content or comment spamming... 😅
Thank you for stopping by!
All pictures are taken by myself with a Motorola Edge 60 Pro and I reserve the copyright - but you're welcome to ask if you'd like to use one of the pics!
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Wonderful shots I think. Seems everywhere is on fire these days. Sorry to hear you are not exempt. Like you said, hope for rain soon.
Thank you! And yes, nothing more than hoping. And supporting the fire station to get the fires under control in time. They're doing overtime these days.
When I gazed at the stars on autumn evenings during my school years, I used to tell my classmates that, in all likelihood, someone on some of those stars—or rather, on their planets—was also looking up at the sky and gazing back at us.
They probably are :-)
I haven't seen a night sky like that since I was young, and lived in the country. Now I live in the suburbs and we don't have a lot of light pollution, so I do see stars. Last night it was wonderful. We went out at about 9:30 and the sky put on a show for us. My daughter helped me spot one of the Dippers.
You captured the stars beautifully here.
A good decision to move where you can see the stars! Probably a healthier life as where you can't. And happier.
I still remember one time when we were on our way to eastern Germany, driving through parts that were quite empty back then. We were on the highway, my brother and I sleeping in the trunk (it was a VW Passat, so the trunk was made into a bed by my father). My parents woke us up. They had stopped at the side, it was the middle of the night. It was the first time that I saw the milky way. It was SO impressive.
The second and last time I saw it like that was in Chile, 14 years ago, in the Atacames desert. We were hitchhiking, and had been dropped of in the middle of the desert, making camp there. It was equally impressive.