The beginning of August 2024, and with clear skies forecast overnight for north Wales it's time for me to pull an all nighter, hopefully photographing the milky way while it's still at its most colourful.
The window of opportunity for milky way photography here at our latitude of 53°N is rather limited, as, for the few weeks around midsummer when the colourful galatic centre is visible above the horizon, the sky never really gets dark, we are in astronomical twilight all night long.
So it's really only the month of August that provides the opportunity to film the galactic centre against a dark sky, and then just for a couple of hours either side of 1am, taking into account we are in British Summer Time, so the darkest part of the night occurs one hour after horological midnight.
And then you need a good dark sky to catch the milky way, relatively free of light pollution, which can pose a problem in our densely populated island.
But fortunately for me I live just a few minutes' drive away from the Clwydian Range Area of Outstandifbng Natural Beauty, which boasts reasonably dark skies so long as you avoid looking north out over the north Wales coastal strip and the bright lights of Liverpool and Birkenhead.
However, the brighest and most colourful part of the milky way is to be seen to the south, so I knew that if I got myself to the top of one of the two mountains available to me, and set my camera up looking south I had a good chance of a result.
So that's what I did, panting my way up the summit of Foel Fenlli with fully laden LowePro camera bag and tripod, to set myself up for a night photoshoot.
And this time lapse video is the result of my night's efforts, having captured 800 images ready to be strung together in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Now where can I go for my next overnight shoot, chasing the Perseid meteors in a few days time?
Filename - vale of clwyd milky way timelapse 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure (start of sequence) - 13 secs @ f/2.8, ISO6400
Exposure (end of sequence) - 13 secs @ f/2.8, ISO6400
Filters - None.
Shooting interval - 15 seconds
Location - Foel Fenlli, The Clwydian Range Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, North Wales
Music - Lifting Dreams - Aakash Gandhi
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 29 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.