David Clapp column

After a year of waiting, Lockdown 2020 was the key to the highest quality astro photograph at St Michael’s Mount

After a year of waiting, Lockdown 2020 was the key to the highest quality astro photograph at St Michael’s Mount

I

t is June 2020 and it's all now the right way up, as the strangest three months of upside down have ended. Cycling my way through the first lockdown has been the only respite, as spring passes me by photographically and we emerge from the strangest time of isolation.

In July, Milky Way season begins. It can actually start in May, but the results can be rather under whelming. With exceptionally long days and the nights that never get fully dark, the best place to be is in the south, which is why so many people head to Devon and Cornwall to soak up the celestial rays.

It is all about the galactic core, the very centre of our galaxy, which finally rises above the horizon for a few hours in those summer months. In May, the core doesn’t rise until very late in the night-time, around 02:00am, leaving very little time to shoot and incredibly light blue skies. By the end of September, the core never fully rises above the horizon, so the peak times for this nocturnal pursuit, the time with the most incredible stars, is the end of July into August.

In the camper is one wife, a camera bag, tripod and a resonator guitar, like the one floating in the sky on the cover of

Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. A few photo friends, Rob and Mark, have come down to shoot the clear skies and we meet at Marazion, in the car park opposite St Michael’s Mount at 22:30pm.

One of the biggest problems with astrophotography is actually humidity. Shooting along the coast can see levels exceeding 90 per cent (compare that to less than 10 per cent in the desert) and this can not only causes lenses to fog, but clarity to greatly reduce, especially across the oceanic horizon. I am not that impressed. The stars behind the Mount are not visible and as it gets darker, I realize the only productive thing to do is sit on the sea wall and play slide guitar into the early hours.

The following night, things are different. Another day of wall-to-wall blue skies and an uneventful sunset are exactly what we need for a clear night. The horizon still has a little vapour, but the conditions have improved with a lower humidity of around 80 per cent.

I assemble my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, my Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8l, my faithful ioptron Skytracker (an astronomical tracking mount) and a Gitzo 4543XL, my scaffolding tripod. With the tripod legs pushed into the sand, I align the tracker with the North Star (Polaris) and clamp the 5D on top. I use a 35mm focal length, ISO1600, f/2.8. With the tracker switched on, I will be able to greatly exceed my usual maximum shutter speeds of 25 secs, so the camera’s BULB Timer is engaged. I set this to 1 minute. This image is going to be an exposure stack of 10 x 1 min exposures for the sea (tracker on), and one 1 min for the Mount (tracker off).

Back on the laptop, I use Deep Sky Stacker to assemble the images and then montage the Mount image into the stars. Then something wonderful becomes apparent – the distasteful sodium lights that usually bathe the mount in yellow are switched off. The two restaurants opposite are still currently closed.

The only ambient light is from the town of Penzance so this means better light, better exposures, better colours, higher quality stars and the best St Michael's Mount astro picture I could have possibly imagined.

NEXT MONTH DUBROVNIK

“Another day of wall-to-wall blue skies and an uneventful sunset are exactly what we need for a clear night”