Capturing daytime images of the Devil’s Tower (Devil’s Tower in Daylight post) was awesome, but capturing the landscape with astrophotography was such a “rush” for me! I have always wanted to learn how to properly expose and capture decent astrophotography images, particularly star trails, meteor showers, and the Milky Way. Fortunately, I was able to learn and capture each of these type of astrophotography images in the 3-day workshop I attended at the Devil’s Tower.
Today’s post features a single, long exposure star trails image, with stars rotating (actually, the stars are not rotating, but the earth’s rotations causes the star trails) around the Devil’s Tower:
(This image was captured from the parking lot, at the base of the Devil’s Tower)
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Tamron 17mm-35mm, f/2.8 – f/3.5 wide angle lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod with Graf Studioball ballhead
- ISO 200
- Aperture f/3.5
- Shutter: Set to “Bulb” and exposed for just over 32 minutes, using an intervelometer
A little background on the Devil’s Tower NM (was hoping to have this in yesterday’s post, but ran out of time!). The Devil’s Tower was proclaimed our first national monument in 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. Boiling down the geological story of how the tower was born, the tower was caused by a pool of magma being forced into sedimentary rocks above it, and cooled underground. As it cooled, it contracted and fractured into “columns”, which can be seen in the tower to this day. The tower rises 867 feet from it’s base and stands 5,112 feet above sea level. The area of the tower’s top is ~1.5 acres, with a diameter of it’s base ~1,000 feet. A very interesting “rock”.