Occasionally I watch YouTube videos and see a location I simply MUST shoot. The One Mile Telescope near Cambridge in England is one such place. The telescope is unused or abandoned and I knew it would make a great foreground subject for some astrophotography.
The One-Mile Telescope at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO), Cambridge, UK is an array of radio telescopes (two fixed and one moveable, fully steerable 18 metre diameter parabolic reflectors operating designed to perform aperture synthesis interferometry. The One Mile Telescope was completed by the Radio Astronomy Group of Cambridge University in 1964.
Now unused and mostly looking abandoned, we made a road trip to shoot this in the dark. This location has been a long time coming; the wait for clear skies has been maybe 3 months. Finally we made it!
The One Mile Telescope under the Stars
As we arrived at the location, I was immediately drawn to this composition. Here I used a full frame fisheye lens tilted backwards to create the curvature on the horizon.
This is around 120 images of 30 seconds each stacked in Photoshop. It's a painstaking process to remove the many plane trails!!
Is there anything or anyone out there?
Not so far away from the One-Mile Telescope is an array of modern satellites very much still in use. We weren't sure how to get near these things so parked up and wandered around the edges of a farmer's field fully expecting to be sent packing by a farmer or the array security.
I was amazed to get so close but the fence was probably a little too high for me to get an unrestricted view. I made a note to myself to bring a taller tripod next time!
This is what I was up against; trees and fences everywhere!
Straight out the iPhone in this case.
A quick wander around the corner in the dark and I managed to get this shot standing a little further away from the fence.
It would have been great to capture a star trail sequence of the array but every few minutes or so these dishes would whir in to life as their aim was adjusted. Not good if you need everything to remain still!
Is anyone listening?
We exited the field and travelled a short distance to the One-Mile Telescope itself. Here I shot another star trail sequence of 45 minutes and used the light from an overhead drone:
Drone Donuts
An evening in the dark with a drone pilot would not be complete without shooting a drone donut!
A composite too far?
Here I shot one frame with lighting from a RGB LED panel. The lighting looks about right, just not sure about the colour?
And the blue version:
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in landscape, urbex and artistic model photography. I like to collaborate with other photographers and occasionally shoot outside my comfort zone.
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