Solus: South Downs Star Trails

January 19th, 2024, was bitterly cold—one of those clear winter nights where frost forms instantly and your breath hangs in the air. I found this solitary tree on the South Downs in East Sussex, standing completely alone on a rolling hillside with an unobstructed view of the northern sky. The Latin title 'Solus' means 'alone', capturing both the tree's isolation and the feeling of standing there through nearly three hours of a winter night.

The South Downs are characterized by these gently rolling chalk hills, often with lone trees standing as landmarks on otherwise bare hilltops. These trees become navigation points for walkers and photographers alike. This particular tree has a perfect shape—symmetrical and well-proportioned—and its position beneath Polaris meant I could create these perfectly circular star trails centered above it.

The technical challenge was the cold. At ISO 500, I needed longer 20-second exposures to gather enough starlight, but that also meant my camera's sensor heating up and cooling down repeatedly over 483 frames across 169 minutes. In the bitter January cold, condensation and frost were constant threats. I had to carefully monitor the lens for any frost forming, which would ruin hours of work.

Using my RF 15-35mm lens at its widest 15mm and f/2.8, I captured this solitary tree beneath the cosmic vortex. The faint orange glow on the horizon—light pollution from coastal towns like Brighton and Eastbourne—adds warmth to the otherwise cold blue tones of the night. Stacking 483 exposures revealed these star trails wheeling around the North Star, showing nearly three hours of Earth's rotation.

Standing there alone on the South Downs for 169 minutes in the January cold, watching my camera click away every 20 seconds while the tree stood motionless and the stars wheeled overhead, was both meditative and challenging. The solitude was profound—just me, the tree, and the rotating cosmos above the frozen Sussex hillside.

When you look at this photograph, I want you to feel that isolation—standing alone on the South Downs on a January night, watching 169 minutes of Earth's rotation traced in star trails above a solitary tree, where the quiet endurance of one tree on an East Sussex hillside meets the infinite patience of the wheeling stars.