Lulworth Castle - Rear Gatehouse

Today I visited a location I was tipped off about a few weeks ago and have been itching to visit on a clear night ever since. Panstarrs managed to distract me significantly most recently.
So when I saw a not-so windy, clear evening, forecast for this weekend and where the temperature wasn't going to be less than -4, I decided to brave the cold and head out!

Now, I did manage to scout the area a week previous, in daylight, as these trips have previously gone poorly when I haven't applied an appropriate level of preparation.

It's a little awkward to get too. The only logical place to park is on the other side of a curving section of road that is on a hill with a blind dip and no verge/pavement.

I'm basically walking on a country road where no driver will be able to spot me until it's too late. Couple that with the fact I intend to walk this section of road in the pitch black makes for a very worrying scenario...
I ran the stretch of road and on my second, night, trip I also waved glow sticks furiously over my head... In a cool way obviously.

This image is of the gates on the north side facing south.
Lulworth Castle is just about visible through the arch on the ride-hand side of the main gate.
So if you haven't guessed already this structure is that of a now unused, gate house, at the rear of the property of Lulworth Castle grounds.
There are public footpaths that run past it which, as I understand it, are not always open but on this occasion they were.

It's a lovely structure and fairly unknown.

This is of the gates from the south side facing north.

The above two images are of inside the two buildings on either side of the gates. The windows were smashed in when I arrived, I didn't enter the buildings my self, I just poked my camera in and the above is what I got.

This was my first shot of the evening and how the gates looked as I first arrived.
That's Lulworth Castle brightly lit in the background. Sadly a bit too brightly lit for me to get in the same exposure. In retrospect I should have tried again with different settings and then composited a single image out of a couple but maybe next time.

The first thing I did was wander around the south side of the gate so I could see if Panstarrs was still visible and whether I could get it in frame above the gates.

That's why the shot is wonky but, right above the lion on the right hand side, the comet can be seen.
It's a little dim even in this image

So, recompose and here we are. Sadly the light pollution to the north drowns out some of the details but I like the image. Aimed a bit higher to remove some of the needless black space beneath the gate houses and took a timelapse sequence.

Just for fun,I grabbed a shot with me in frame under the comet. :)

And some star-trail stacks from the timelapses above:

The lightng provided on the gates was provided by the headlights of the guest leaving whatever event was occurring at Lulworth Castle that night.

Hunting Panstarrs - Part 2

Tonight marks my second attempt to get the Panstarrs comet during its travels across our night skies.

This is my second chance to catch a glimpse for this whole month since it's been possible to view and my first attempt was a complete fail.
I was not 100% confident but I had to try.
I went to the same location as before albeit a lot drier, significantly less windy and so not bitterly, bitterly cold.

About ten minutes after I reached my location and got my gear setup, I referred to a compass to locate the general direction required and my first sighting of it can be seen below(A bit out of focus).
Just on the edge of the left hand side.

I didn't notice it straight away, I'd moved the camera elsewhere and took other shots searching for it thinking the evening was going to be yet another fail or the sky wasn't dark enough... but when I reviewed the images more carefully I noticed just a little smudge(the screen on the back of the camera doesn't have the same resolution that your monitor does after all), I zoomed in on it and lo, there it was.
Once I realised where it was I set about shooting it properly... well as well as I could.

The above image is a pretty untouched version of the shot as it comes out of the camera. As you can see it's not huge in the frame of the lens I used, a 35mm, on a crop sensor, giving it an effective focal length of 50-55mm.
Which explains why I likely had such poor success on my previous trip where I tried to use my 11mm lens,(effective 16mm). The comet would have been rendered so tiny in the frame it must have been indistinguishable from other stars, certainly on further review of those previous shots I still can't find it, even using these shots as reference.

The above image is a stacked image using a program called Deep Sky Stacker. It helps reduce some of the noise, I'm still experimenting with it but it does help to get some clearer/sharper stars the only problem is it tends to tear everything else apart. Hence why the foreground/landscape/horizon is cropped out.

In retrospect, whilst I couldn't be happier that I managed to capture the comet during it's brief traversal past our night sky, after such a long wait with so much preparation and disappointment due to just a constant and never ending stream of clouds, I think the images are a bit dull.
They lack any sort of foreground aside from a dark horizon, I've tried to spice it up with a time-lapse and the shot above where I've stacked the images into a star trail composite but weather permitting, if I get time, I might try another trip to get a more interesting shot, for nowthough I'm quite happy.

The shots that created the composite above came to around 116 images over a 16 minute period.
Stacking them into a star-trail image is a bit of whimsy really as it mostly obscures the comet and doesn't add much to the composition. The true reason for taking the series of shots is to compile them into a video/animation, which helps bring things to life a little bit.

TBH these videos don't come out that well, the resolution defaults so low when embedded that the details are lost but if you wanted to go fullscreen with it and select HD you'll get to see the outcome.

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.