Star trails: eight of the best

Our favourite long-exposure shots of the night sky

Star trails are easy enough to capture in principle. You take your camera, aim to the north and at the sky, and then either leave the shutter open for a few hours or take a bunch of quicker shots and stack them together in free bits of software like DeepSkyStacker. There are plenty of good how-to guides on the web.

But in practice they’re a little harder to make beautiful. You tend to need some good foreground, a sharp, fast, wide-angle lens, a sturdy tripod, a remote cable release and a whole lot of patience.Here are eight of our favourite shots.