A warm night in February 2024 and I'm sitting on my balcony in shorts and a Tee shirt watching the stars wheel by over the parched, barren landscape.
You might have guessed by now that I'm not in North Wales!
My wife Liz and I were enjoying a two week break on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, and I was taking full advantage of the radically different climate to indulge in some night time astrophotography, without having to dress up like a polar explorer or climb a mountain.
This is the view looking north, inland up the gorge at Taurito on the south coast of Gran Canaria, a popular and brightly lit seaside resort.
But with all the hotels behind me to the south, the light pollution wasn't too bad, and I was able to film the stars pretty well, with the aid of a neutral density filter, used inverted, to reduce the brightness of the volcanic landscape which I used to frame the sky.
Another benefit of looking north was that my composition included Polaris, the north star, much closer to the horizon at this latitude of 28°N than at my home latitude of 53°N, which enabled me to catch the rotation of the stars and constellations around this fixed point in the heavens.
See if you can work out which star is Polaris from watching the video.
Filename - taurito night timelapse 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @ 17mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 10 secs @ f/4, ISO3200
Exposure (end of sequence) - 10 secs @ f/4, ISO3200
Filters - 2 stop neutral density graduated filter used inverted to reduce the brightness of the ground relative to the sky.
Shooting interval - 10 seconds
Location - Taurito, Gran Canaria, The Canary Islands
Music - Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies by Tchaikovsky
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K, and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 33 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.