Why Time Vortex? Read on for how the location is linked to Dr Who. It is also reputed to be haunted.

Hiorne Tower is a triangular shaped building or folly on the Downs in Arundel Park and was built by the architect Francis Hiorne for the Duke of Norfolk in the late 18th century. It featured as a location in Silver Nemesis, the story that celebrated Doctor Who's 25th anniversary in 1988. The episode starred Sylvester McCoy and included the Cybermen. In the episode the tomb containing the Nemesis statue central to the story was kept inside the tower.

Many local landmarks like Churches and follies have been photographed with Star Trails but surprisingly this one has not. There is nothing in Google or Flickr unless there are images without tags. It is accessible with a footpath going past it. The location is on the South Downs above Arundel with not too much in the way of light pollution looking north. The image was taken last Thursday on another clear night.

Note that the Exif is taken from one of the images. The image is a blend of 115 shots at 39 seconds so 1 hour 15 minutes starting at 8.10pm. It was never fully dark due to the remnants of twilight until 8.30 by which time moon twilight if there is such a term started with the moon rising at 8.50. The images were taken with an interval timer while I read an ebook nearby. One difference from my normal procedure was that due to a strong wind I wedged the tripod into the wheels and frame of my bicycle which I had flat on the grass. Different sort of photographic accessory!

Before blending the images I used a Photoshop Action to increase the exposure by one stop and increase clarity on all the Raw files and save as jpeg’s. This was done using the Photoshop batch processing to automate this for all the images. More of a pain was using the Heal Tool to remove aircraft trails on about 20 of the images. Blending of all the images was done automatically with the free StarTrails software.