Bat-eared Fox Puppies.

[Heath Robinson]

Thanks @Tstone.
I'm pretty glad it didn't charge because I was relatively defenceless.

There are a number of different types/styles of star photography.
There are guys who mount cameras onto telescopes for "close up" photos. How close obviously depends on how much telescope one has. These will typically have fracming mechanisms added in order to get enough light in. I never got involved with this stuff though.

What I did was photography with a relatively normal but higher-end digital camera and a relatively short, fast lens. In my case a 15-30mm f2.8, almost always used at 15mm and f2.8. The camera was a Nikon D750 (a full frame model which is in my opinion almost non negotiable).
Shutter speed is set to get minimal streaking in the stars (due to the earth's rotation). The maximum depends on lens focal length, the direction you are pointing in and camera resolution and there are formulea to calculate it but I typically used about 30 seconds. ISO was adjusted in order to get a reasonably exposed photo but it was usually pretty high (somewhere between 8000 and 12700).

I would then set my camera up to take photos continuously for several hours. IE a new exposure starting immediately as the previous one ended.

The post processing was then done to produce three results from each set of photos. A single photo (showing the stars basically as one sees them, IE appearing to be stationary), a stack of all the photos creating a so-called "star trail" (the photo I posted here) and a time-lapse video.

[Spliffcat]

A few years ago I had a craze for night sky photography.
This requires that one spends hours in the dark in places with as little human habitation as possible. On a self-drive tour through Namibia I wanted to take a set of pictures including a quiver tree and a starry background, and to do so a local friend advised that I spend some time at Blutkoppe.

For those who have not been, Namibia has some very interesting geology. In a number of areas you will be driving along on what seems to be an endless flat plain, and all of a sudden a canyon will open up or a range of hills will appear. Blutkoppe is such an area. A flat plain with some large hills that appear to be basically a single large rock poking up. But there is also a smallish canyon just a couple of km away.
During the day we had poked around in the canyon, finding a monument/gravesite to a couple of WW1 German soldiers, a stone ruin, a small pool of water and... Some Leopard tracks.

That evening, up on the plain, I found my quiver tree. It was about 300m from the road, and of course driving off road is not allowed. So I carried all my gear to the spot, set the camera up and started taking photographs. Any artificial light in the vicinity is likely to ruin such photographs, so I was sitting in the darkness. It was of course also new moon as that is the best time to see the stars. So it was really dark.

At some times one's imagination starts playing tricks on you, and eventually I could virtually feel that leopard stalking me. And just then I heard something right behind me.
To hell with the photo, I whipped around, torch in hand. It was a Bat-ear, about 10 yards away. We stood and looked at each other for a minute or so before he trotted away.

Very interesting post, thank you.
Is it maybe these soldiers grave you came across?

https://jackgreeffjr.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/the-sheltering-desert-henno-martin-2/

[Heath Robinson]

Spliffcat, the link doesn't work.
But Blutkoppe is quite far from where the events in the book are supposed to have taken place.
There is a sign-board for one of their shelters on the C14 between Walvis and Solitaire, at a river crossing.

I haven't read the book in a long time, and I wm not sure how far they travelled.

[Spliffcat]

Hi Heath
Looks like The Sheltering Desert was set in the Second World War. So I wonder whose graves you found? Very interesting to find out.