I was on this great Africa trip from Kenya to Simon’s Town for 72 days by road visiting over nine African countries. I knew Africa is one of the darkest continents, with minimum light pollution based on the dark sky chart. So, I wanted to give a hand at photographing night sky.
I thought I would get many chances to photograph the sky as we were camping in most locations and in two plus months, I should get many chances to photograph the sky. But unfortunately, though we camped in most places the light pollution from the camp itself was terrible as most of the camps had big lights on to scare the animals away. Also, milky way was not rising till the middle of the night. I had just two good chances on two nights to try the sky.
Once in Masai Mara camp in Loita hills. The problem there was the chief of the tribe wanted to keep us safe from the animals, so wherever we went one of the Masai’s would follow us with a big flashlight and would be impatient that we went back to the safety of the tents. So, I could not do any time lapse photography there, but milky way was spectacular, but high up in the sky. The second chance was in early November 2019 in Spitzkoppe with lots of rocky hills around us to give some background.
Google map location
So, when we arrived at the Spitzkoppe campsite in Namibia, I decided to look around for the best place to try night sky. I found a location between two main hills from where I could photograph the night sky. But I had to cross another hurdle, our group leader should give me permission to be alone at night somewhere half a kilometer from the camp. I checked with Joe if has any objections, he did mention presence of wild animals like hyena and jackals and I had seen some footprints of these animals in the area where I was planning to put my sleeping bag. I told him bravely that I am not afraid of wild animals, though in my heart I was bit scared after the encounter with wild elephants in Victoria Falls. He hesitantly gave me permission to go. So, after the dinner I took my sleeping mat, sleeping bag and a flimsy tripod and my camera to the spot. Initially, I had already focused my focusing to infinity with auto focusing. It was not very windy but may be winds were 3 to 4 mph, which died by midnight.
I looked up at the star studded sky, no light pollution except for a couple of weak lights from the village about two miles away in the east, but the quarter moon was still visible. I slept for an hour or so as the moon was to set around midnight. Once settled, I placed my tripod on a hard surface so that it won’t shake (I think that was mistake because it did shake a bit), then took some shots to see what was the best exposure. At 20s and 2000 ISO and 3.5 aperture it was a bit too dark, so I decided to take 30s shots, which was a little bit higher as you can see the stars start tracking, but that I found only when I blew up the pictures on the computer. I set up a time lapse of 1.5 minutes delay per photograph as it would take some time to write. Looking up in the sky I could see Orion, Taurus and Pleadis constellations with no background landscape, just the sky.
I expected the path through which the stars would travel and thus I thought that they will pass from the peaks with jagged edges in the westerly direction. I faced my camera in that direction and started the time lapse. I sat and watched the sky for some time. I saw some meteors from the top of the sky.
Then I decided to take a nap. I got up many times in the middle of the night to make sure that there are no animals in the nearby area and, I can hear the camera clicking every 1,5 minutes. By about after three hours, I found that I was facing the camera in more of north-western direction than the star movements. So, I decided to focus on sugar loaf peak that is where the main constellations were disappearing. I could also see some clouds of clusters of stars in the southern part of the sky. I am not familiar with the southern sky, so I am not sure till now what those clusters are. So, I pointed the camera in that direction and took some pictures.
Then, I saw a meteor from some part of the sky. So quickly turned my camera towards that direction hoping for another one. Luckily for me one more meteor streaked from that area towards the earth. And I was pleased I caught it in the shot.
I wanted to change the direction for time lapse photos. By this time, I had less than two hours of dark sky as it got light by 5.00 am. That means I will have just 2 seconds worth time lapse video. But still I gave it a try. Here is the star movement from midnight to till about 3.00 am in the video format, which has been slowed down to half the speed so you have six seconds to view.
Next time I know what to do. But only thing is I need to find a dark area, may be in Southern California or may be another trip to Namibia!!
Time lapse video
