Here is my first experiment with astro time lapse photography. Yes, I understand that this is very short, BUT this is the work of two nights worth of photographing 1,300 frames. Each of these shots I set up after 10 pm on a clear night. The moon can be your friend or your enemy on shoots like this. In photography, I believe in shooting with what nature gives me at the given moment.
On the first shot of this sequence, that is the moon moving across the sky as it lights up the landscape well after midnight. At approximately 9 seconds, there is a plane that travels through the middle of the sky leaving a contrail. As the contrail moves in front of the moon, it casts a moon shadow across the landscape.
I set my ISO to 1600 so that I can keep my shutter speeds relatively fast, otherwise you will end up with more of the star trail effect when shutter openings approach 1 minute or longer. At ISO 1600 and an f/stop of 4.0, I shot with a shutter opening of 30 seconds.
