Stars and more stars!

Lets see if I remember how to blog. I know, it has been a LONG while. I am sure I can come up with a thousand excuses, but lets just leave it at that, and welcome back me!

Over the past month or two, I have done a few star trails and really, that is all the shooting I have been doing. I hope to go back out to catch a sunset sometime soon, but for now, my back yard is a lot closer to me then the ocean. I set up a couple of nights ago, and I wanted to make sure I had some foreground details, and not just the hill behind my house. So, I set up on the lower deck, where there are a couple of trees, and this is what I came up with. Not too shabby. Just looking forward to the day when I can really go all out, to the desert or perhaps even further south, where I can get the Southern Cross! Some day, I would like to visit an old friend in Hawaii, he says they can see the Southern Cross from where they live.

One of the reasons why I wanted to share this with you, is because I wanted to share a link. You see, for the past year and a half that I have been shooting these star trails, I have been using an OLD program, that had its last update in 2005! Whats worse, is that it is a program that is not MAC friendly! I always had to blow the dust off of my old PC laptop, just for the stacking part of the process. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I took a class, offered by Oceanside Photo and Telescope, for star trails. I really did not learn too much on the HOW to take them, I have been doing this for more then a year. But I did learn about a new program for processing these, which included a MAC friendly version! OH HAPPY DAY! Not only do I get to leave my PC in the dust where it belongs, but the program takes a fraction of the time as the old program! Best part of all, its freeware!

http://www.markus-enzweiler.de/software/software.html

There is a link for you. They even have Flickr page for folks to show off their final images. I am more then happy to show off what this program has done for me!

Please, enjoy!