On Sunday we could catch one of those rare clear November nights. We went out to try to see some falling stars, results of the fading Leonid shower from the weekend.
My first idea was to take star trails of the northern or eastern sky on a several minute exposure while looking for the Leonids, but the places in question along the Schlei were covered by thick fog and the possible views were partially blocked by clouds. Also here, Auf der Freiheit in Schleswig the fog was rising quickly, and just few minutes later the lower part of Orion was already getting covered.
Technically star photography is a rather new territory for me and I had to experiment a bit. I started with 2 and 1 minute exposures, but even for the wide angle that was too long and created some unpleasant trails (they have to be longer too really look good). Even 30 seconds gave results that were too blurry, so in the end I had to go down to 15 seconds, with the aperture wide open at 2.8 and the ISO up to 2500. Also, I had to find a gap between the seemingly endless stream of planes flying from west to east and from east to west right through the heart of Orion.
The good part of the long time experimenting was that we saw several falling stars above the Schlei, even one bright one crossing Orion.
View Schlei:52 in a larger map