It came for me at the Hellstone!

Tonight  decided to go somewhere new and, in so doing, decided to go somewhere I'd been before but a place I'd not been to for about a decade. It's a little out of the way, towards Portland but I've been meaning to make the journey ever since the first day I successfully shot the Milkyway. A place known, typically, as The Hellstone.

Due to the volume of images and an animation please click the jump to continue reading.

Hunting Panstarrs

Tonight I went hunting Panstarrs.
It is a comet that will be viewable for most if not all of the latter part of this month.(March 2013)
So far though tonight has been my only clear sky, which is unfortunate as it's both a work-night and it's been raining all day, but not wanting to risk missing my only opportunity I grabbed my gear and ran for it before the sun set.

Todays pick of location would be Badbury Rings. A place I recently went to scout it's star-scape viability and to play with glow sticks.

Sadly there were consequences...

I took two pretty harsh trips on the slippery muddy slopes of Badbury rings

Panstarrs should be visible, with some assistance from binoculars or similar, chasing the setting sun below the horizon, during sunset.
This is fiddly for me as the sky is a lot brighter than i'd normally expect it to be and so the settings I need to use will be largely different. As it turns out though it wouldn't matter too much as the following animation should illustrate.

The source of that long line of thick clouds is, as you might guess, exactly where i'd expect the comet to be, by the time it cleared up the comet was below the horizon.

I tried to make the most of the trip and took some other shots, including a string of shots I shall be trying to composite into a panoramic shot. If it works well it will possibly be photograph of the week this week.

Here are a few of the other star snaps I took.