Photographing the night sky has become a passion for me. I was targeting the Comet c/2022 E-3 (ZTF) when it was at its brightest but it still was washed out by the moon. Still, I stayed out making images and used the Olympus Live Composite to get some star trails.
Comet
According to the news, the comet was going to be visible to the naked eye on Feb. 1 — 2 with a magnitude of five. Unfortunately, there was also a waxing three quarter moon which washed out a lot of the stars in the sky along with the comet. I have a new seminar titled “Never say die when photographing the night sky!” as a result. Obviously, the comet was no longer in play. That didn’t keep me from trying in case I would be able to tease it out in post. (I couldn’t). Enter my second camera body.
Alternative — photograph star trails
Many times, there are lots of long exposures, so I often work with a second camera. I mounted it on a Platypod eXtreme with a Platyball head to use the LIVECOMP (learn more about Using Olympus Live Composite to capture-star-trails) on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III. LIVECOMP is short for Live Composite. Once your camera is set for an exposure, it records the scene. Once the scene is recorded, it continually makes the image allowing only new light to record. In this case, the camera made 50-second exposures for about 40 minutes. You can see the trails being recorded so you have the ability to stop when the star trails are as you would like them to be seen.
Post processing
The beauty of Live Composite is less post production and your file is a single RAW file, vs lots of images that need to be blended with the screen mode. I did have to clean up aircraft trails. When I am working a single camera, I watch the sky for planes moving through the scene. I place my hand in front of the lens while it makes its way across the sky. I end up with a few breaks in the star trails but they are a little easier to clean up with a little file rotation vs having to clone out all the blinking flying machine lights.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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