Star Glow: Henfield Star Trails

November 17th, 2025, took me to a quiet spot near Henfield in West Sussex, a location I’ve visited before but had been waiting for the right conditions before a revist. What drew me back was this skeletal tree standing alone in the middle of the water, an eerie, striking shape that becomes even more dramatic under a clear night sky. I knew that if the conditions lined up, the tree and its reflection would anchor a near-perfect star trail composition.

Henfield sits between the South Downs and the Low Weald, a landscape full of shallow floodplains and winter ponds that appear and vanish with the seasons. On this particular night, the air was cold, still, and completely clear—ideal for star trail photography. With Polaris positioned high above the tree, I set up my composition to capture full, sweeping concentric circles across the sky and their mirrored counterparts in the water below.

Using my Canon R5 and ultra-wide lens, I shot hundreds of exposures—each one contributing a small piece of Earth’s rotation. Over the course of the session, the sky slowly transformed from pinpoint stars to luminous arcs, while the tree stood motionless in the darkness. The faint glow on the horizon came from distant Sussex villages, adding a gentle gradient that balanced the cool tones of the night.

Stacking the frames revealed this stunning symmetry: a vortex of star trails spiralling overhead and reflected almost perfectly beneath the tree. The title Star Glow captures both the luminous colour of the trails and the way the reflected light wraps around the tree’s silhouette, giving the scene a surreal, otherworldly mood.

Standing there in the flooded field in the stillness of a November night—watching the stars wheel across the sky while the landscape barely made a sound—was a moment of pure calm. This photograph condenses that time: the peace, the patience, and the quiet drama of West Sussex after dark, where a lone tree near Henfield becomes the centre of a cosmic circle traced by nearly two hours of Earth's rotation.