Derek Rippe Photography » Archive » The Night Sky at Pilchuck Mountain

The Night Sky at Pilchuck Mountain

I’ve always had a fascination for the stars and outer space, and I’ve always wanted to do some night sky photography. With the Nikon D5100′s built in interval timer, I knew I had the tools in place to shoot a series of photos and string them together in a short time-lapse playback.

We made a last minute trip to REI, and the gentleman that helped us suggested Pilchuck Mountain, as we could drive right to a parking lot with a great view of the sky.

This is my first time trying this type of photography, but I really enjoy it and want to do more. I learned a lot on this evening and hope to continue to hone my skills and produce some pretty cool stuff.

Be sure to watch the video in HD (720p or 1080p) for the best watch. If you look closely, you can even see some satellites streak across the sky.

You might also be interested in:

Time-lapse of Clouds over Mt. Rainier

July 10, 2011 | Filed under Video and tagged with mountain, night, sky, stars, time-lapse.

Tags: mountain, night, sky, stars, time-lapse

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4 Responses to The Night Sky at Pilchuck Mountain

Adair says:

July 18, 2011 at 4:19 am

Wow! The time-lapse is awesome

Reply
- admin says:
  
  July 24, 2011 at 7:45 pm
  
  Thanks Adair! Hopefully they’ll get better from here on out, but it’s tough to stay up all night and monitor and camera and the skies, so it’s not something I can realistically get out and do every weekend!
  
  Reply
Andrew says:

September 21, 2011 at 9:45 pm

Looks amazing! I just got a D5100 and one of my goals is to do night sky time lapse, but it’s pretty new to me. What were your lenses and settings?

Reply
- admin says:
  
  October 17, 2011 at 4:43 pm
  
  Hi Andrew,
  
  Sorry for the long delay in responding. I was using my 10.2mm fisheye lens to capture as much sky as possible, and had it set to a low ISO (100 I believe) and a low aperture (f2.8). I used a 20 second exposure, and setup the Interval Timer in the camera to take a photo every 40 seconds (as it takes the camera 20 seconds to process a 20 second exposure).
  
  Reply