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

By Nancy Atkinson - July 1, 2013 at 2:52 PM UTC | Observing
Moon-over-cape-town.jpg

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."

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com