360° panorama. 24-hour duration.
This is a 360° ‘little planet’ panorama and also a 24-hour picture! I was wondering if it was possible to visualize a full day in a photo capturing the motion of stars during the night and our own solar system star, the Sun during the day. The fact that this was never attempted before made it more appealing, so I decided to give it a try! I started the morning of December 30, 2010, and I finished more than a day later.
My equipment was a Canon crop camera and a 15mm lens on a tripod, an external battery to power the camera for more than 24 hours and an intervalometer (a device to take shots remotely and/or program shooting). More details on the equipment, are later in the article.
In the beginning, the camera was facing east, and I was gradually turning it, every two hours, following the Sun’s motion. During the day, I was taking two kinds of photos:
1) Normal landscape shots to stitch together and make a panorama.
2) Shots using a solar filter, capturing the Sun’s disk. This is a special kind of filter that blocks 99.9% of light so the Sun appears as a white disk and the rest of the photo is completely dark.
Nearly the whole night, the camera was taking star trail photos facing North, having Polaris at the centre. A few star trail shots and star field images during dawn and dusk with the camera facing north-west and north-east were used to gradually blend the night with the day part of the image.
Later, in the post process, I combined the landscape and the Sun photos by stacking them and removing the black background from the filtered shots. The camera was exactly at the same position as I was shooting the landscape and the Sun (from the left side of my frame until the Sun reached the right side of my frame) so the Sun’s position in relation to the landscape was retained.
In one of the shots, when the Sun was at maximum altitude, I removed the filter to capture a more ‘dramatic’, unfiltered Sunshot.
Towards mid-day, I was taking shorter exposures with lower ISO. After mid-day I was gradually changing to longer exposures and higher ISO.
After sunset, I took a few shots with the camera facing west-northwest and I stacked them in a short half-hour star trail image to achieve a smoother transition from the ‘day part’ to the ‘night part’ of the image. The ‘night part’ is composed of a dozen shots covering the landscape from west to east.
At 19.13 local time, I turned the camera north and began taking the all-night star trails which lasted 11 hours. After a whole night shooting, I turned the camera to the northeast and I took a separate half-hour star trail, as a transition from the night part to the day part of the image.
Challenges
- Preparation. This picture is composed of many shots taken under very different lighting conditions. This requires a detailed preparation of shooting timing and camera orientation. I have created a shooting plan and set an alarm clock to be notified whenever I had to change the camera angle or settings.
- Alone in the middle of nowhere. This was not too bad! I had to stay in a remote spot for approximately 30 hours. I was in place 2-3 hours before sunrise to prepare for shooting and I also stayed 2-3 hours more on the second day to shoot the second consequent sunrise as I lost the first one due to clouds. So, this photo is a 24-hour representation but the actual shooting is more!
- Weather. I planned the shooting for the Winter Solstice, achieving the lowest possible Sun’s arc, and the longest star trail duration. The problem is that even in Greece, it takes a bit of luck to get 24 continuous cloudless hours in the middle of winter. This day finally came on December 30 – 31, 2010, a few days after the Winter Solstice.
- Cold. I had to stay awake for the whole night, inspecting the camera lens for condensation every few minutes. (At the time I didn’t know about dew heaters…). The temperature was around 3 degrees Celsius, so this was challenging. Luckily, I didn’t have condensation issues.
- Camera power. A normal camera battery lasts for only a few hours. After researching, I found an adapter to power the camera from a large 12V battery.
- All night star trails. A lot of things can go wrong. A thick cloud that passes by can ruin the star trail photo. As the camera must stay at the same position for the whole night, other possible game stoppers include condensation, wind, rain or accidentally kicking the tripod or power supply. The latter is a real danger after staying awake for many hours in cold and dark conditions.
Equipment
• A Canon 550D DSLR camera. This was a new model in the distant 2010 when the shooting took place. Nowadays, in July 2022 it is not a new camera, but still taking decent photos!
• Camera tripod.
• A fast and high-capacity memory card. It is a good idea to have a fast memory card for the star trail shooting where the gap between shots is only 1-2 seconds.
• A wide field lens. Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye. I prefer prime lenses. They are not as flexible as zoom lenses, but they are generally sharper and faster.
• An intervalometer. I had the TC80N3 which was the most reliable. At the time, Canon was not providing an intervalometer for the ‘small’ DSLR models (Canon 400D, 450D, 550D etc) so an adapter was necessary:
http://www.werbeagentur.org/oldwexi/TC80N3.html
• An external power source for the camera. I used a large 12V battery which was similar to a car battery. It is better to use one that is specifically designed for continuous charge and discharge cycles.
• A solar membrane filter for the Sun shots. The filter is sold as a sheet which is adapted to custom-made 3D printed rings or even simple carton rings.
• A dew heater is a must in UK moist conditions. In Greece, condensation is rarely an issue.
• An alarm clock to manually change settings, take shots etc. Today there are apps you can use to fully automate everything but a semi-automated way of using an intervalometer, a written shooting plan and alarm notifications is also effective.
• Warm clothes. Isothermal clothes and winter boots are a good investment for long, cold winter nights.
• Water – Food.
• A GPS unit is a good idea, so if you get lost in the mountains, the rescue team will know exactly where to find you! A tip I recently learned the hard way. Google Maps will not navigate you to a specific coordinate-based spot in the mountains. You need a trekking app for this as Handy GPS.
Software
Cartes Du Ciel or similar astronomy software. It has essential information such as the exact sunrise/sunset times, the Sun’s highest altitude to calculate framing, dawn and dusk times etc.
Startrails.de. I use this software to compose the star trails photo.
Ptgui. It is the photo stitching software.
Photoshop.
Flaming Pear Flexify
Post process.
It took me about 12 hours to compose and process a single photo from over 500 star trail, 35 Sun sequence and 25 landscape shots. I already had experience in making ‘little planet’ images, star trails and Sun timelapse shots but even after I successfully completed the shooting, I wasn’t sure if all the above could be combined in a single image.
My workflow
• 3 Startrail images. Main 11-hour, all-night star trail and the two small ‘transition’ star trails during dusk and dawn.
• Combining the day part landscape photos with the Sun’s disk shots.
• Combining the above with the landscape photos in a 360° panorama in Ptgui. It can be a ‘little planet’ panorama or an equirectangular panorama that can be converted to ‘little planet’ using a photoshop plugin called Flaming Pear Flexify. It is important to export the image from Ptgui as blended panorama AND individual images so you can achieve better blending by superimposing them on top of the blended image when necessary.
• Correcting the (many) blending imperfections in Photoshod.
This is what the image looked like after stitching in Ptgui and before Photoshop.
This image was published in several magazines, newspapers and sites as the Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Since then, this image was attempted by a couple of photographers and has always been published as Astronomy Picture of the Day!
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160902.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170830.html
The following message, I recently received surpasses all the awards and publications and it is the real reason behind all this effort.
Hello Chris,
I just wanted to drop you a message to say thank you for the time and effort you put into creating your 24 hour little planet panorama almost a dozen years ago. I first saw the photograph in early 2011 or so (not sure when exactly it was, but I recall where I was, which dramatically limits when it could’ve been). For years, I’ve held it in my mind as the absolute standard for what planning and execution and total awareness of how to use one’s equipment can create. The absolute planning required for it- not just to shoot, but also to know what will be required for the processing and then to execute… it really is an excellent photograph and I just wanted to drop you a message to say thanks for sharing it with the world.
-Almond
I hope you find this project interesting.
Clear Skies to everyone and May the Weather Be With You!