Beautiful Timelapse — and an Invitation to Try Capturing the Night Sky from a City

Can you get good astrophotography shots from within a city? Astrophotographer Bruno Letarte has proved you can capture stunning shots of both city and night sky and turn them into a beautiful timelapse. Last fall we featured a timelapse by Bruno taken at the dark sky site of the South African Large Telescope (SALT), but he said his latest project of shooting among the city lights was a “real learning experience.”

“It was a completely different challenge, much trickier than shooting a perfect dark sky, where you find your optimal exposure time and stick to it for everything,” Bruno told Universe Today via email. “Different objects and different focal lengths, lights in the foreground, moving cars, etc. Many sequences had to be decided on the spot with no time to really think it through.”

He captured various objects (Moon, Sun, planets, comets) either rising or setting against a nice city landscape — with light pollution and all – and all taken with an entry level enthusiast camera.

“It was a real learning experience for me to shoot in these various conditions. It’s also an invitation to the general public to look up in their night sky to see what’s up there, even in a city,” Bruno added. “And for the amateur photographer out there, I’ve included the tech details and comments for each sequences with a few seconds of flashing text.”