RocketSTEM Issue #7 - May 2014 | Page 19

Using a Compact Camera Staying with the concept of not spending any money you can use your existing camera to take starscapes. All you need is a camera that can take exposures up to 30 seconds or one that has a night scene setting. The camera should be set at the highest ISO setting of 3200 or 6400. You will then need a tripod, beanbag or some other form of stabilisation to prevent the dark spot with no lights around this will give you some lovely images of the stars, showing you far more than you could ever see with your eyes. If your camera has a bulb setting and a means of triggering it without touching the camera then you can start to take longer exposures of 2 to 3 minutes. With exposures of this length you will start to see the stars trailing. These star trails occur because the heavens rotate around the celestial poles. In the northern hemisphere they rotate around Polaris. Star trailing is something that astrophotographers try to eliminate, but they can be used in a very artistic manner by taking lots of images and then merging then together to form streaking lines any exposure longer than 30 seconds will start to show trailing, if you use telephoto lenses then that time can be reduced to just a few seconds. Using a DSLR budding astrophotographers. I used my trusty old Nikon D300 as my main camera in astrophotography ways to create some stunning images. The beauty of the control that can be gai