Star trail photography looks incredible, there’s something about the way the stars seem to be moving in an image while everything else is just frozen in time.

While it may seem complicated, in this article we will show you it is actually quite easy and requires minimal equipment to plan, shoot, and edit star trails.

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So follow along, because, by the end of this article, you will have learned how to capture the night sky star trails and produce spectacular imagery from your backyard.

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So What Is Star Trail Photography?

If you’ve ever seen a night time image of the sky where the stars seem like they are streaked across the image, then you’ve seen a star trail image.

It is a technique of astrophotography which captures the movement of the stars (the earth’s actually), and commonly has a fixed object as the point of focus in the foreground.

Star trail images are different to capturing sharp astro images of the night sky. For that you’ll need an additional star tracker for you camera to move with the earths rotation to capture clear and sharp images.

So the foreground image is “fixed” while the background stars are “trailing” across the sky.

As for the foreground object, it can be anything, as long as it is large enough. Some ideas that I usually see are trees, mountains, and houses. But really you can let your imagination run wild and be creative with different focal points that will give that contrasting effect with the night sky.

The 2 Style Effects Of Star Trails You Can Capture

Depending on where in the sky you setup and point your camera to capture star trails you will get one of two effects,

Star Lines Photography Effect

Appears to streak in a straight line across the sky. To achieve this effect, it’s recommended to aim your camera in the direction of either east or west. Because of the rotation of the earth, you’ll get a straight line effect in your photos.

Star Circles Photography Effect

Appears to swirls around and around in a circular motion. This effect is achieved by aiming your camera at the south celestial pole or northern celestial pole (depending on where you are located in the world).

How long does it take to get star trails?

Everything you need to capture star trail images can be done in a single night.

Once your camera is set up and ready to take photos, the capturing process can be as little as 30 minutes to several hours.

All depending on how long you want the star trail effect to be in your images.

Planning Your Shoot

If you’re ready to get started in photographing star trails, there are a few things you really should do before you even touch your camera.

Because our goal is to capture the stars, which are only faintly visible to the naked eye. We plan and set our specific exposure, aperture settings, ISO, and location. Pre-planning is just as important as actually taking the picture because the best equipment in the world won’t do much if you’re trying to capture star trails on a cloudy night or on a full moon.

The following (moon, dark skies, weather, and location) all affect the end image result so definitely need to be taken into consideration before you load up your equipment and start capturing your star trails.

Moon

The brightness of the moon is useful for various astrophotography image effects, but when it comes to taking pictures of star trails were looking for the least amount of light possible.

Tip: photographing at 25% or less moon phase is an excellent range for capturing star trails. Dark enough to see the full brightness of the stars but with a subtle amount of light to bring enough detail into the foreground objects in your images.

If the moonlight is too bright, it will make the stars look much dimmer and also doesn’t allow for long exposures as it’ll also wash out the image.

Luckily you don’t have to guess, there are some great tools online to check the moon phase for the following months. Check out this useful moon phase calendar, It’ll give you a whole months worth of moon phase so you can plan ahead.

Simply set your month, year and whether your northern or southern hemisphere (it should auto pick this up) but always good to double check its correct.

Dark Skies

Light pollution can turn the most well-planned shoot into a nightmare. You’ll notice that even while it may look dark in your backyard, there is usually quite a lot of light pollution from all around you. Things light street lights, building lights, cars all add to the ambient light pollution.

If you can, we recommend driving out to somewhere a little more remote away from the bright lights of the suburbs or city.

Because the darker the sky, the more you can open up the exposure and aperture settings to get as much brightness and detail of the star trails possible. Too much light and your star trail images will start looking pale and washed out real quick.

Blue Marble Light Pollution Map is an excellent site to find surrounding locations near you that don’t have or have minimal light pollution near you.

Weather

You also need to look at the weather forecast before a photography shoot. If it’s a cloudy night, then there won’t be much available for you to capture. Going out on a night that has clear skies is your best bet, so checking a site like cleardarksky.com allows you to find the next 48 hours reports of when the sky will be clear.

Location

Star trails look best when there is a “fixed” featured foreground object to contrast against the moving star trails in your image.

Look for a location that has something interesting you can use as a foreground image for your picture. Some ideas are big trees, mountains, light tower, bridges, houses, and buildings. These were just a few ideas, but you can really get creative here.

What Equipment Is Needed For Star Trail Photography?

To capture star trails, the equipment needed is minimal when compared to deep space astrophotography.

Below is a quick list of the core equipment pieces you need to have and also some optional equipment to make things a little more comfortable during your photo shoot.

Camera

The most important (and obvious) piece you’ll need is a camera with “Bulb” mode. If you already have a DSLR camera, then that will should do just fine.

All modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have the “bulb” mode. This lets you shoot for as long as you’re holding down the shutter button that could be from 31 seconds, up to 3 hours.

You don’t actually have to hold down your shutter button by hand for that long. You need something that will do it for you like an intervalometer.

Just make sure whatever camera you decide to use has a manual mode “M” so you can manually adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. This is critical as anything “auto” just doesn’t do the job for astrophotography.

Tripod

Look for a strong and sturdy tripod to house your camera and lens. The bigger and heavier the better, a well-made tripod can withstand windy conditions, and that’s what we need here because even minimal movement can result in blurry pictures.

Camera Remote / Intervalometer

A stock camera usually allows images of up to 30 seconds, with an intervalometer attach

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