St Mary's Church Star Trails | Photography Print

In November 2024, we held a photography exhibition as part of Reflections, a Scarborough Lights festival event, displaying our work inside the beautiful and historic Saint Mary's Church. While preparing for the show, we noticed that one of the church's magnificent gable-end windows would make for a perfect star trail composition. We planned the shot carefully, but the weeks leading up to the exhibition were relentlessly busy, and the skies refused to clear in time.

Then, on the night of the 17th of November, the clouds finally parted.

The weather at the time was bitterly cold and so we wrapped up in as many layers as we could with hot water bottles, fleece blankets, and headed out into feels-like temperatures of around -4°C to realise our vision. Luna came too, cosy in her pyjamas and her new birthday fleece coat. The sky that greeted us was extraordinary, the almost-full Moon shining brilliantly alongside Jupiter, the Pleiades glittering nearby, Orion climbing back into the winter sky, Mars gleaming red, and our favourite star Sirius the Dog Star,  twinkling fiercely on the horizon. It was also the peak night of the Leonid meteor shower, and even through the bright moonlight, we caught several fast, bright meteors streaking overhead.

We spent over two hours in the sub-zero cold, capturing hundreds of continuous frames that we later combined to create this image. The result shows one of the gable ends of Saint Mary's Church, its ancient stonework and beautiful window, with the stars of the night sky tracing perfect concentric circles above it. This circular effect, known as star trailing, is created by the rotation of the Earth itself. As our planet spins on its axis, the stars appear to wheel around the North Celestial Pole, leaving arcs of coloured light across a long exposure.

Look closely at the church window and you will also see something quietly special, reflections of starlight caught in the glass. For an event called Reflections, it felt like the sky was in on the idea.

Printed on premium fine art paper with professional inks, every detail from the warm stone of the church to the sweeping arcs of star trails above is preserved with gallery-quality clarity.

• All prints available in A4, A3, and A2
• A4 prints supplied with a 12" × 16" card mount (black or white)
• A3 prints supplied with a 20" × 16" card mount (black or white)
• A2 prints supplied unmounted
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