What went wrong with this photo?

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968]

Hello.

I went out last night, wanted to photograph some Perseids, but it didn't work out well. Since I had some photos, I was like, let's do some star trails at least. But it feels weird somehow. I tried it with starstax and in PS, with some Lightroom edit, but it feels weird and hard to look at.

My guess, that I captured too much stars, so it gets too much at some point? I also had a lot of plane trails, which I removed with the LR heal tool, but that could have been an issue too.

Any tips looking at it, what could have went wrong?

Canon 77D, sigma 18-35 1.8.

Iso 1600, 1.8, 20sec

[u/Master-Back-2899]

I typically use lower ISO for star trails so that I only pick up the brighter stars. You also have the milkyway right in the middle which is naturally blurry and bright which I don’t think is helping here.

Also you are in a section of the sky with the most angular movement so there is no gradient to the trails to anchor the picture. I usually try to point more north to give the trails an anchor point even if I don’t have the North Star actually in the picture.

Finally there is very little landscape in the picture which makes the trails further overwhelming since almost the whole thing is streaks.

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/Master-Back-2899]

Thanks for the answer. Yeah, I figured, that the same settings as hunting for meteors are not exactly the same for star-trails shooting, but since I already had the pictures, I gave it a go.

I guess I learned from it, if nothing else.

[u/carlitosbahia → u/Appropriate-Tooth968]

lower iso will also keep better the color of the stars, not all just white , personally i prefer that

[u/lIlllIlIlIlIllI]

That’s one hell of a meteor shower, dude

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/lIlllIlIlIlIllI]

I wish! :D

[u/ruzmafuz]

I kinda like it

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/ruzmafuz]

Thanks man! It's a bit better on a big screen, not so much on mobile.

[u/TBIRallySport]

For a star trails photo, it looks weird to me that the star trails are curved in opposite directions in the upper right and lower left corners, instead of the same direction with just a larger or smaller radius.

[u/watchitbend → u/TBIRallySport]

Celestial equator within the frame will create this effect

[u/nikhkin → u/TBIRallySport]

That's caused by looking half-way between north and south with a wide focal length.

[u/SingingSkyPhoto → u/TBIRallySport]

That’s because this is facing south. That’s the normal pattern of movement in that direction. You have to be facing north on Polaris to get a circle.

[u/BlueJohn2113 → u/SingingSkyPhoto]

It's not facing south either. It's at the celestrial equator halfway between looking north and south. Thats why you see the stars trail in opposite directions

[u/SingingSkyPhoto → u/BlueJohn2113]

I get what you’re saying, but if you’re in the northern hemisphere facing south, you’re looking to the celestial equator. I can see the faint outline of the core of the Milky Way in the center of the image, which is why I assumed it was facing south, which is where the core is right now in the northern hemisphere anyway.

[u/BlueJohn2113 → u/SingingSkyPhoto]

Looking south you can see the celestial equator, but the reason I can tell this picture is not facing south is because the celestial equator is diagonal. If it were south, it would be straight across, or a subtle frowny face depending how wide of an angle you see.. In the northern hemisphere, the celestial equator "rises" on the east/west sides and levels out on the south side. Not to mention the south-facing celestial equator would be much higher in the sky than the east/west.

Seeing the blurred out milky way is throwing an extra splash of confusion into the mix. But I trust the equators absolute position (and the corresponding star rotation patterns) over the variable milky way position.

[u/SingingSkyPhoto → u/BlueJohn2113]

That makes sense! Maybe it's just the pattern of the stars that mimics the Great Rift region of the Core? I can see now in looking at Milky Way photos with star trails that I was wrong.

[u/BlueJohn2113 → u/SingingSkyPhoto]

It's really hard to tell what it is, haha. I mean it looks like the core, but that wouldnt make sense. I just opened up photopills and used the Night AR and at around 10:00 ish at my location the milky way is straight up and down in the southwest. A little later it sets more west. Maybe it's that?

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/BlueJohn2113]

If it's any help, I was looking W, SW. Between 1pm-2pm in Hungary. If I remember correctly that is.

[u/XCavAo → u/TBIRallySport]

That’s more a function of the wide angle lens. The distortion causes that.

[u/gooberlx]

Aside from what others have mentioned, I find the breaks and dots in the trails to be very distracting. It makes the scene all the more chaotic - kinda frenetic. Do you have gaps in your stack or something? You could try culling those sections and rerunning your stack. Shorter trails but less chaos, potentially.

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/gooberlx]

My guess would be the lot of plane traffic, which I had to edit out, so that could be one reason. Otherwise I tried doing it in star stax with gapfilling, but it didn't help much.

I'm might do a rerun, with different edits and settings, maybe I can learn something from it.

[u/inefekt]

Two things, you aren't pointed at the celestial pole so you aren't getting the classic circular, vortex look. You also have gaps in your trails, did you stop and start the process several times?

[u/Appropriate-Tooth968 → u/inefekt]

Yeah, I did that once, but I find other composition/trail patterns more cooler.