Nightscape Photography - 9 June 2026
- Clive Inglis
- Jun 9
- 4 min read
The first Flamsteed Landscape Astrophotography Masterclass was held at the National Maritime Museum’s lecture theatre on Tuesday 9th June and presented by Alec Knox, Helen Edwards and Tej Dyal.
Alec – Linking the traditions of classical landscape painting with modern night-sky imaging.
Alec started the evening’s talks by taking us on a journey charting man’s relationship with the night sky. He started by describing some of the earliest known archaeological sites with astronomical alignments; stone circles constructed in the Nubian Desert around 7,000 years ago, a burial tomb in the Hebrides, and Stonehenge.
Moving on, he explained how even earlier, man had found shapes in the night sky which they included in their art, including the Australian Aboriginal Emu in the Sky, formed by dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, and the cave paintings of the Lascaux Cave in south-west France, which have been interpreted as including constellations such as Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades.
He then went on to describe how subsequent civilisations in Egypt, Babylonia and the Yucatán Peninsula in Mesoamerica had charted the skies in their art. He suggested that turning points in man’s relationship with the night sky occurred with the development of the astrolabe in ancient Greece over two thousand years ago, allowing accurate measurement of the night sky, and with the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s, resulting in discoveries that permanently transformed man’s understanding of the night sky.
Turning to how the principles of classical landscape painting can be applied to capturing the night sky through astrophotography, Alec introduced the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich as examples of composition, and Luminism, an American movement of landscape painting from the 1850s to the 1870s: a movement which focused on the effects of light, accurate reproduction of the sky and atmosphere, and, in its fine brush strokes, making its paintings almost photographic in quality.
Around this period, early developments in monochrome film capture were taking place, including the first astronomical photograph, an image of the Moon taken by Louis Daguerre in 1839. Unfortunately, this photograph was destroyed in a fire.
The 1970s saw the digital revolution following the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD) by physicists Willard Boyle and George Smith at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969. This eventually led to the first self-contained digital camera (100 x 100 pixels) produced by Kodak in 1975 and the first commercially available DSLR, the Kodak DCS 100, in 1991.
Alec concluded this part of his talk by commenting on the irony that, as we developed more and more sensitive cameras to capture fainter and fainter objects in the night sky, the amount of light pollution preventing us from doing this has increased more and more.
Composition
Alec then moved on to explain the principles of composition. He showed how, in classical art, doors and windows have been used to provide a frame to the picture. He explained the use of leading lines in the landscape to guide the eye through an image and how a higher or lower viewpoint, (the position of the camera is in when viewing the scene), influences the image.
With the limited amount of time available, it was not possible to cover this topic in depth, therefore Alec is putting together reading notes that will cover in detail the principles of landscape composition, which will be sent out to attendees.
Helen – Planning Photographing the Stones of Stenness, Orkney
At this point in the evening, Helen took over to describe how she went about planning and taking the following nightscape images of the Stones of Stenness. She explained that part of her planning was to research the geographical location of the site and possible sightlines using tools such as Google Maps, then to visit the site during the day.
Alec – Equipment
Owing to the limited time available, Alec was only able to give a brief overview of the equipment needed to undertake landscape astrophotography. A detailed description of the equipment needed will be included in the reading notes sent out to attendees.
However, Alec had brought along two suitable, highly portable equipment setups for display and discussion. The first consists of a Lumix mirrorless camera fitted with a ‘fast’ wide-angle lens, mounted on a Move Shoot Move Nomad star tracker, fitted to an equatorial wedge and lightweight aluminium tripod. This setup is suited to taking longer exposures of the night sky by “tracking” the movement of the stars and therefore reducing star trailing. To assist in the polar alignment needed, Alec has included in this rig a laser pointer and polar scope.
The second setup takes advantage of the increased low-light sensitivity of modern smartphone cameras and consists simply of an iPhone fitted to a lightweight tripod using a smartphone clamp and an articulating head. Although limited to shorter exposures this setup is still capable of capturing exceptional nightscape images.
Tej – Planning Astronomical Alignments
Tej described how he had been so inspired by photographs including astronomical alignments with the Sun and Moon as subjects that he wanted to take similar images himself. So he set about using Google Earth to find the distance, bearing and height of a large number of prominent London landmarks from possible viewpoints around the London area. Then, using basic trigonometry, he was able to calculate each landmark’s elevation angle. The result was a database of the bearing and elevation of each landmark from chosen viewpoints. Using readily available ephemeris data for the Sun and Moon, he was then able to calculate the time at which these would align with the landmark’s position, as imaged from the viewpoint.
These predictions allowed Tej, (and other members of Flamsteed AS), to be in the right time and place to capture the superb alignment images and time-lapses he has shown to the society over recent years.
He explained that following on from these initial manual calculations, he wrote a Python programme to carry out these calculations automatically, which he has subsequently developed into a smartphone application.
Many thanks to Alec, Helen and Tej for putting together and presenting this workshop, and to Simon and the RMG IT team for recording and making it available to the Flamsteed members.
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