Tom J Martinez PhotoBlog

Moon, Venus and Mercury Conjunction

2016-02-06T09:34:00.000-06:00

What a wonderful site this morning. The thin crescent moon with earthshine, bright Venus to it's right, and elusive Mercury below. This is my southeast horizon from Pueblo West right out my front door. The steam you see rising just above the horizon is from the Comanche Generating Station 17 miles away.

Five Planets in the Morning Sky

2016-02-04T14:13:00.004-06:00

Feb 4, 2016

I woke up about 5:30 a.m. to a windy, cold but clear morning. I quickly set up my camera on a tripod in front of my home, which thankfully blocked most of the cold wind. By 6:00 a.m. I could see Mercury to the lower left of brighter Venus, both near the brightening horizon. The moon, higher and to their right shown brilliantly. Saturn was a bit higher to the moon's right. A bit higher yet and next to the roof of the house sits Mars. On the other side of the peaked roof is blue Spica (not a planet) and to the far right next to the roof is giant Jupiter.

I had to shoot nine images side by side and with the format of the camera set vertical to grab all of the planets in this 90 degree field of view. I stitched all nine images using the free panoramic maker Image Composite Editor, by Mircosoft.

Jupiter, Moon, Venus Conjunction II

2015-06-21T16:29:00.002-05:00

This evening the triple conjunction was pretty nice from Powell Observatory at Lewis-Young park in Louisburg, KS. Look closely to see the Gemini twins, Pollux and Castor, just above the dome. The 30" telescope can just be seen inside the 20-foot dome. The smaller dome houses a 12" scope used for astrophotography. Hundreds of people listened to talks about astronomy, looked through the 30" and many other telescopes set up in the field by members of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City.

Moon, Jupiter and Venus Conjunction

2015-06-20T01:44:00.000-05:00

Driving home from visiting with friends I had to stop and take picture of the lovely conjunction of the Moon with the planets Jupiter and Venus. The twins, Pollux and Caster, are way over to the right and faintly visible just above the trees. They are the major stars in the constellation Gemini. After many days of constant rain it was so nice to have a day with clear skies for a change.

Rainbow

2015-05-29T21:10:00.001-05:00

After a wonderful dinner with my sister and her husband, we arrived at her home in Pueblo, CO when I saw this rainbow. I took 6 pictures, 3 for the top half and 3 for the bottom half. I stitched them in the program ICE (Image Composite Editor), a free stitching program from Microsoft.

Venus Passes Close to the Seven Sisters

2015-04-11T01:05:00.000-05:00

Looking West soon after the sun on April 10, Venus was a beautiful sight near the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. The image was taken with a 24mm lens at f/4 for 10 seconds, ISO 1600. The Orion Nebula, the fuzzy spot in the sword of Orion can easily be seen. Another star cluster, the Hyades, is the V-shaped grouping in the constellation Taurus.

Time Lapse of April 4, 2015 Lunar Eclipse over KC

2015-04-07T03:47:00.000-05:00

I finally finished the Time Lapse of the April 4, 2015 Lunar Eclipse setting over the Kansas City skyline. A surprise for me was also seeing the earth's shadow drop behind the buildings soon after the Moon set.

Lunar Eclipse from the City

2015-04-04T18:56:00.001-05:00

Click on image for a larger view

It all started when fellow Astronomical Society of Kansas City member, Jay Manifold, mentioned at our monthly meeting, that he found a place not too far east of downtown Kansas City, MO where the eclipsing moon would be setting along the Kansas City Skyline. I did my own research by locating the small nameless park in Google Earth. A Google street view looked promising, so with that, some NASA info on the April 4, 2015 eclipse and a program called "The Photographer's Ephemeris", I determined approximately where the moon would be among the buildings. With Jay's help, I found the names of the buildings and created the daytime view you see above.

Among the dozens of image I took, this one combines the not quite eclipsed moon, with the KC Skyline in a beautiful, dark blue twilight sky.

The sky was so clear that we saw it go behind the 925 Grand building. The tall building at right is the 909 Walnut and the one in front is the Federal Courthouse. It's interesting to note that if the moon was totally eclipse, we may not have seen it. What we saw was the last bit of moon peeking out from behind earth's shadow. In Kansas City, the moon was totally eclipsed after it set behind the buildings.

Clif Guy took this nice shot of the group. From left to right, Jay Manifold, Sam Davidson, Don and Terri Dixon, Denise Moser and myself. It was just above the freezing point and quite chilly.

Denise, Don, Terri and Jay. Good view from the little grassy knoll.

The angle in the photo by Terri Dixon shows my camera in the foreground making it look twice as big as it really is! Clif Guy an Jay Manifold in the background.

Soon after the moon was gone, everyone took off for breakfast. I love a good breakfast with good company, but I wanted to hang around for the "Golden hour". Soon after the sun rises it shines a golden light over everything. As I was packing up to go home, a very nice man in a uniform came over and told me that I wasn't supposed to be there. The property belongs to the University (UMKC?), but he thought I was just taking photos of the skyline and didn't bother me until I was done. We talked for bit about eclipses and then he drove off. Apparently the University does not want people hanging around their little park.

Crescent Moon, Venus and Pleiades

2015-03-23T02:56:00.001-05:00

Click on Image for a larger view

The planet Venus was a wonderful site next to the crescent Moon this evening, March 22, 2015. This is a view from my backyard. The Pleiades Star Cluster is at the top.

I my Canon T4i on a tripod and used my 18 mm - 135 mm lens set at 18 mm and f/3.5 and ISO 1600 for 10 seconds.

This one was taken with my 300mm f/4 lens set at f/8 for 2 seconds at 800 ISO. I used my iOptron SkyTracker on a tripod to track the pair so that I was assured of a sharper image.

Comet Lovejoy near the Plieades

2015-01-18T16:47:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I set up my camera with my 70-200 Canon lens on my iOptron Sky Tracker and took 418 30-second images in about 4 hours. Out of those 418 I used 98 to put together the above image. On that day, Jan 16, 2015, it was near the Plieades Star Cluster. I was pleasantly surprised to get the nebulosity that surrounds these beautiful cluster.

Cloud Iridescence

2014-12-06T16:30:00.001-06:00

A fairly uncommon phenomenon is "Cloud Iridescence". I noticed this while watching my son-in-law, Brad, put up some Christmas lights on the roof of his house the day after Thanksgiving. The colors you see are a diffraction of the Sun's light passing through small water or ice droplets. Usually near the Sun, so I had to block the Sun with the roof top, otherwise the Sun's glare would overwhelm the effect. Brad was so intent on his chore that I don't think he was ever aware of the colorful site behind him.

Click on image for a larger view

Adjusting the image by reducing the highlights and increasing the detail in the shadows and reducing the exposure in software such as LightRoom brings out detail and color a bit better:

Heart Of America Star Party 2014

2014-11-10T01:00:00.000-06:00

Another great Heart Of America Star Party has come and gone. Check out the website at HOASP.com. This yearly star party has been a great success for the Astronomical Society of Kansas City ever since it started in 2007. This year I did something I've been wanting to do for a while. I created a time lapse video of the event. On Thursday the night was too cloudy to shoot, but we got some great nights on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Here is the video, which is best seen on a big monitor, full screen, speakers on and at the high resolution of 1080p (click on the little gear icon at the lower right of the video to change the resolution):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoeHr0GhVjo

My good friend, and astrophotographer, John Reed, also shot a time lapse and I have included it into the video. John is a member of the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society and has some really nice images taken with fairly simple equipment. You can see his work here: Photography In The Dark.

On Saturday night, the clearest night of all three, I ran into a humidity problem. Anyone who gets into this hobby runs into this right away, especially if they live in the Mid West. Practically every night, the dew gets everything soaking wet. To keep the moisture off the lens of my camera, I use a heating strap that I made from a few resistors, wrapped in velcro. The dew heater gets its power from a 12 volt, 28 amp battery, which also gives power to my camera and time lapse rail by Dynamic Perception. As you can see in the video for the night of Oct 25, humidity crept in and started fogging the images. Unknown to me, the dew heater around my lens was not working (broken wire). Even so, what would normally be a bunch of deleted pictures, I decided to keep them and create the video anyway. I was pleasantly surprised with the soft quality it gives to the show. I replaced the broken dew heater with another one for the the next night.

On Sunday night, most everyone had gone home, since the star party was officially over. I decided to stay since it was supposed to be clear. I set up my time lapse equipment next to Master Observer Scott Kranz with his scope in the foreground, hoping to get him in action. But Scott was no where to be seen and you can see his telescope covered up in the video. Never the less, a nice crescent moon was a treat during the very windy twilight hours. The Milky Way set in the West just before clouds came in and ruined the rest of the night.

Our hobby is somewhat like fishing. We set up our telescopes in hopes of a good catch of starlight on a clear night, but sometimes we catch nothing because of clouds.

Lunar Eclipse Time Lapse 10-08-2014

2014-10-20T13:47:00.002-05:00

Here is a time lapse of the Lunar Eclipse of Oct 8, 2014:

Lunar Eclipse - Oct 8, 2014

2014-10-16T04:12:00.001-05:00

Click on the image for a larger view

October 8, 2014, about 2 a.m., Gloria and I drove to Hillsdale Lake, KS, about a 20 minute drive from my home in Cleveland, MO. I set up my time lapse equipment and two tripods with my cameras to take pictures of the second Lunar Eclipse of the year. Clouds were lying low in the southwest, but clear over the rest of the sky and the Full Moon was shining brightly. At 4:17 a.m., the first bite from the shadow of the earth was taking place. Slowly, as the sky got darker, and more and more of the moon was being eclipsed by earth's shadow, we watched the stars appear above us.

Around 5:25, the moon turned to a beautiful, red ocher, brighter on one side, this being due to the fact that the moon did not go through the exact center of the earth's shadow. The picture above was taken with my 300mm f/4 Canon lens and Canon Xti. It is actually two images combined to show what it looked like in my binoculars. The planet Uranus was easily visible in binoculars. The picture of the moon was 4 seconds at ISO 400 and the stars were shot for 15 seconds. It is impossible to show this with one shot, so combining them is the only way.

Above, is the view across the lake, take with my 18mm f/3.5 Canon lens and the same Xti Canon camera. The exposure was 10 seconds at ISO 1600. This is also a double exposure, with the moon exposed for 10 seconds, but with the ISO at 200, essentially 3 stops slower.

This image is one taken from the set of time lapse pictures. The exposure for this shot was 25 seconds with a 10mm f/3.5 lens and my Canon T4i at ISO 3200. The longer exposure and higher ISO setting bring out many more stars, including the Andromeda galaxy at upper right.

A truly wonderful night. The only thing I could hear was an occasional fish jumping in the lake. At one point I watched a raccoon walk along the edge of the lake not noticing me, until I moved slightly, then it scooted into the bushes.

The next Lunar Eclipse will occur September 28, 2015.

Blood Moon and Great Blue Heron

2014-04-25T01:19:00.002-05:00

Click on image for a larger view

The first of four consecutive Lunar Eclipses has come and gone (see the end of this article to learn about the other three). Above is an excellent image by my good friend Jim Zanardi. I have created a time lapse video from my images and put it on YouTube here.

My wife, Gloria, and I spent the whole night watching and photographing it, April 14-15, 2014. It was an awesome sight, but wow it was cold! Temperatures were around 25 degrees and there was frost over everything, including my photo equipment. But I'm used to that and prepared for it. I have a dew heater, connected to a 12-volt battery, wrapped around the lens to keep the optics slightly warmer than the air around it.

Click on image for a larger view

We arrived at the site, Middle Creek Lake, just south of Louisburg, KS, around 6 p.m. I wanted to set up my time lapse rig in the daylight so that I wouldn't make any mistakes. Yeah, sure! I made plenty of mistakes, but I didn't find out about them until the next day. We had scouted out the lake a week before and found a nice place I could shoot the eclipse from. I had to park my car about 150 feet from the shore line, so I made a few trips carrying my gear. A cold wind was blowing from the north, but it was totally clear. I hoped the wind would die down as it usually does at night in the Mid-West.

I set up my new toy, a Dynamic Perception Stage Zero controller and rail that I purchased from my good friend and photographer, Wayne Thompson. I attached my iOptron Sky Tracker on the rail and my Canon 4Ti on top of it. My plan was to shoot the time lapse with my 10-22 mm lens at 10mm and have the Sky Tracker pan from left to right following the Moon and the rail move from West to East. After taking a few pictures of my set up in front of the lake I waited for the Moon to rise above the tree line.

Once I saw the Moon I started shooting a series of images with my 300mm f/4 lens on a tripod. I took a total of 166 images about every 5 seconds (counted in my head) hoping that was about right. It turned out okay, but maybe a shot every 2 to 3 seconds would have been smoother.

I also took several wide angle pictures of the Moon rising with the lake as the foreground. Several ducks swam by and a reflection of moonlight on the lake created a peacefully serene scene.

Before the eclipse started and the moon was glaringly bright there was a surprise visit by a Great Blue Heron. I did not know about this until a few days later. Here are two of the best pics where he held still for the 30 seconds it took to get the image. He is right behind the piece of driftwood.

Right around totality I was looking at the eclipse with a pair of binoculars. I took them away from my eyes and moments later I saw a bright meteor flashing downward. This image shows the meteor and Mars to the upper right of the eclipsed moon. The streak at lower right is that of an airplane. The moon is pasted into the picture from one I took with telephoto lens to make it look more like what we actually saw that night.

In the above photo the Great Blue Heron and his shadow once again makes its appearance (lower left next to the driftwood). Here I have left the moon's image alone to show that a 30 second exposure wipes any detail out completely. Of course, a much shorter exposure would show detail on the moon and everything else would be way too dark.

The color changes between all of the images during the eclipse has not been modified. The color temperature setting on my camera was set to daylight through out and the color changes are actual changes from the light of the eclipsed moon.

Mistakes Not To Do The Next Time

Mistake #1. I started the time lapse sequence around 9 p.m. after the Moon had already risen. My plan was to shoot 30 second exposures with an interval of 2 seconds all night long. A few days before the event, I had taken some test shots of the almost full moon from my backyard to see what my exposures should be. Those tests told me that I could get away with shooting 30 seconds at f/3.5 and ISO 3200 all night. The Moon before eclipse would be really over exposed, but I could fix that afterward in Lightroom by lowering the exposure setting to bring out detail in the sky and clouds. But my test exposures on the evening of the event showed much more overexposure, so I kept the 30 second exposure but lowered the ISO to 1600, essentially, decreasing the exposure by 1 stop. As it turned out, even this was too much overexposure.

Mistake #2. I had never used the Dynamic Perception system until that night, but had done some test with it indoors to learn how to use it. Unfortunately I accidently put the drive belt on a little weird and it did not track like it should have.

Mistake #3. There are two ways to make the camera shoot a time lapse sequence with the rail. Option #1: Set up the controller to move camera the intended distance along the rail and have the camera settings set to shoot a 30 second exposure at the end of the move, then the controller delays 2 seconds to allow the image to download to the card before making another rail move. Option #2: Set up the controller to do all of the above and just set the camera to Bulb. The second option seemed the simplest. At home it seemed to work, but on the field it did not. What happened was the camera took a 30 second exposure, the rail moved and waited 2 seconds then sent a signal to the camera to take another exposure, but instead, the camera skipped the next shot. The camera did not have enough time to download the last image so it waited another 30 seconds until the controller released the last signal to shoot. So my intervals between shots were 34 seconds instead of 2 seconds. This made a rather quick and jittery time lapse, which is what you see in the final video. I am using a very fast card in my camera (Sandisk Extreme 63 G) which, on tests without the Dynamic Perception controller, allows me to shoot images with 2 second intervals easily. Apparently with the controller controlling the shots, the interval needs to be longer.

Mistake #4. I've been wanting to use some software that I've been reading about, but haven't had the time to try it out. I purchased and downloaded and ebook on using the software after the eclipse. My mistake was in not doing this before the eclipse. It would have corrected mistake #1. The software is LRTimelpase, by Gunther Wegner. In concert with Lightroom, it is an excellent piece of software for editing, grading and rendering a time lapse sequence. One very good part of the software is for what is known as "Holy Grail Day to Night" shooting. With this software, you can adjust exposure time or ISO settings during shooting to compensate for changing light conditions (which can be as much as 22 stops), then smooth out the transitions during the processing of the sequence.

Luckily, I was able to use the images I got to produce a video, although it could have been a lot better. I consider this a learning experience, so that for the next eclipse coming on October 8, 2014, I will be a little bit better prepared.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this was the first of four lunar eclipses within the span of 2 years. This is known as a tetrad. The last time we had a tetrad was in 2003-2004. The next tetrad will not happen for another 20 years, 2032-2033. There are several religious groups making a big to do about this current tetrad, but in fact there is nothing special about it. In the far distant future there will be no tetrads at all. To read more about this see article this by Fred Espenak.

Fall Colors 2013

2013-11-23T12:40:00.001-06:00

click on image for larger view

In October I found this wonderful driveway to someone's home lined with beautiful Fall colors.

Two Comets on a Moonlit Morning

2013-11-21T02:04:00.000-06:00

Click on image for a larger view

Rick Henderson,the president of my astronomy club, the Astronomical Society of Kansas City, put out a note on our Yahoo-Group that he was going out to Powell Observatory to look at comet Ison on Monday morning (Nov. 18). As it so happened, I was planning on trying to photograph the comet that morning also, so I headed out about 3 a.m. and arrived at the parking lot next to the observatory (the parking lot has a good view to the eastern horizon). I set up two cameras, one pointing to the southwest setting it to shoot wide angle images of whoever showed up. The picture above shows me setting up my 300mm lens and camera on my iOptron Sky Tracker and tripod. Powell Observatory can be seen in the background as well as the bright Full Moon with Orion to it's left.

By the time comet Ison was high enough to see, a crowd started to gather. About 11 ASKC members showed up with various binoculars and telescopes. In the photo above, Rick Henderson has his 8" Meade scope set up. Denise Moser can be see looking through her binoculars at comet Ison. Lights from other people parking their cars light up the scene. As soon as I set up my 300mm lens, I started taking pictures of comet Lovejoy, a comet that was brighter than was expected. As can be seen by my telephoto lens, Lovejoy was pretty high up in the sky, sitting between the Big Dipper and the constellation Leo.

Comet Lovejoy is a very nice comet. It's fan-like tail is easily seen in binoculars and fairly easy to photograph. I took about 40 images, each 15 seconds long at ISO 1600. I wish I could have gone longer, but the bright Moon prevented that.

Comet Ison was about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon when I started shooting it. I took quite a number of images, but lost all but 8 shots. Each image was 8 seconds long. It took me quite a number of hours using various techniques to bring out the tail on Ison. I was amazed at how long the tail was, extending past the bright star Spica and out of the frame. Half way between the nucleus of the comet and Spica is a piece of the comet that shows up as a tail disconnection. Below are two images of the raw files, with no processing at all. As you can see, no tail is visible in the raw image, but it is there after I coaxed it out.

RAW image of Comet Lovejoy

RAW image of Comet Ison

Comet Ison is much dimmer than it was expected. Not easy to see, even in binoculars, much less with the unaided eye. The comet is now heading for a rendezvous with the Sun on Thanksgiving day. If it survives it's close encounter with the Sun, I am crossing my fingers hoping it will be a bright comet with a long tail in the morning sky. But comets are worse than cats and they do what they want to do.

A Halloween Star and an Exploding Comet

2013-10-29T22:28:00.001-05:00

Click on image for larger view

This is comet 17P/Holmes near the "Demon Star", Algol. I took this picture almost 6 years ago, a year before I started this Photo Blog, so many have not seen this image. I put this up for two reasons.

First, there is a fairly new comet that is very similar to comet Holmes. Both of them are "exploding" comets. Back in October 24, 2007, comet Holmes shocked astronomers with a spectacular eruption. In less than 24 hours, this extremely faint comet (17th magnitude), brightened by a factor of nearly a million and became a naked eye object. At the time I took this photo in January, it had expanded into an object larger than the Sun. The new comet, C/2012 X1 Linear, is now doing the same thing. It was seen to first explode on October 20th of this year and amateur astronomers have seen the comet's brightness increase 100 times. It is not as bright as Holmes at this point, but can be captured by astrophotograhers. See the middle of the page on Spaceweather.com for pictures and where it is located in the morning sky.
Second, in the above photo, comet Holmes passed near the bright, naked eye star Algol, in the constellation Perseus. Algol is usually the second-brightest star in Perseus, but only when it is not being eclipsed by it's companion star. During the eclipse, which occurs regularly every 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes, Algol dims from 2.1 magnitude to 3.4 and lasts roughly 10 hours. This "dimming" can be seen without the aide of a telescope, so more than likely it was known in ancient times, but the variability of Algol was first recorded in 1667.

What makes this a good "Halloween" star is the mythology involved with this star: Perseus, the mythical Greek hero, used the Gorgon Medusa's severed head to turn the sea monster Cetus into stone. Algol represented the "evil eye" of Medusa to the ancient Greeks. An evil eye that winks at you for 10 hours approximately every 3 days.

We know Algol as the "Demon Star", derived from Arabic "ra's al-ghul", meaning "head of the ghoul". In Hebrew folklore, Algol was known as "Rosh ha Satan", or "Satan's Head". In Chinese astronomy, it is known as the Fifth Star of the Mausoleum and also had the grim name "Tseih She", meaning "Piled up corpses". What better star than this for "All Hallows Eve"?

Click on image for a larger view

During the Fall and early Winter, Algol can be located high in the north east sky after sunset.

Chart created with SkySafari Pro.
Comet Holmes image was taken with a 300mm f/4 Canon lens on a Canon Xti DSLR piggybacked on telescope. 29 - 2 minute exposures.

Comet Ison Oct 6, 2013

2013-10-16T18:19:00.003-05:00

Click on image for larger view

Comet Ison, pictured here in the early morning sky of October 6, is expected to be visible to the unaided eye in November and possibly a very bright comet after it goes around the Sun on November 25th. The image was taken through my Orion 190mm Maksotuv-Newtonian telescope. Twenty two images, each 2 minutes long, were taken and combined to create the image. At the time it was not an easy object to view visually, but could be seen at the eyepiece of a telescope.

The green color you see in the comet is normal. The color is created when subatomic particles from the solar wind strike the gas (coma) surrounding the nucleus of the comet. Molecules of cyanogen and diatomic carbon are excited and made to glow, just like the gas in a fluorescent lamp glows when electricity excites it. The tail of the comet is also made up of gas and dust being pushed by the same solar wind.

As it gets closer to the Sun, the coma will get larger and the tail longer and more prominent. Even though it is fainter then expected at this time, if we are lucky, comet Ison will hopefully put on a fantastic show

Sunset Panorama

2013-09-29T02:29:00.001-05:00

Click on Image for a larger view

After raining most of the day, it started to clear late in the afternoon for a wonderful picnic with the many friends of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City at Powell Observatory. We were witness to the colors of a wonderful sunset. The image is taken pointing to the southeast, where the clouds had been pushed by the dry front in the west promising a clear sky for stargazers.

Taken with my Canon 4Ti, the image is reduced from a large file consisting of 7 images stitched together in Photoshop. Each image was taken in a vertical position with an 18mm lens. The vertical angle is 63 degrees high and the width is about 60 degrees across.

Colorado Rainbows

2013-09-23T15:28:00.000-05:00

Rain sometimes brings "rainbows". Since I just happened to be visiting family during one of Colorado's extreme weather conditions, I saw a few nice ones. I wasn't in the areas where flooding occurred, but I was driving close by. The two bows in the pictures above were taken as I was driving on Highway 285 somewhere near Bailey, Colorado, heading towards Denver.

This one had crepuscular rays going through it making for an unusual looking rainbow. I was heading north on I-25 from Walsenburg to Pueblo and just had to stop to get an image.

Nova Delphini and the Moon

2013-08-17T04:02:00.000-05:00

A nova was discovered by Koichi Itagaki of Yamagata, Japan, on August 14. Because of clouds, I couldn't get it's picture until August 16. The above image shows the nova in the constellation Delphinus. Another constellation, Sagitta (the Arrow) appropriately points to the new star.

A nova is usually a White Dwarf that has a close orbiting companion star that is dumping hydrogen onto the surface of the White Dwarf. After many layers of hydrogen accumulate, the bottom layer explodes in a runaway hydrogen-fusion reaction.

I used my Canon 4ti at ISO 800 and my 70-200mm f/2.8 Canon lens set at 70mm. Twenty exposures, each 15 seconds long. Tracking was done with my new iOptron SkyTracker.

I couldn't help but to take an image of the gibbous moon sitting close by the nova. The same equipment was used, but the exposure was much shorter and I zoomed the lens up to 200mm. Exposure was 1/200 at f/8, ISO 200.

What Satellite Is This?

2013-08-08T04:40:00.000-05:00

The image above is of a very bright satellite (not a meteor). This is usually called a satellite flare, and most satellite flares this bright are Iridium Flares. They are named after the Iridium communication satellites that produce this events. Most Iridium flares last for 10 or 15 seconds. What is strange about this flare is that it lasted for about 1 1/2 minutes. I know this because the image you see is from a combination of 3 images, each 30 seconds long (taken from the Milky Way time lapse video). The other odd thing is that I cannot find which satellite did this. I used an App called "Satellite Safari", which seems to be pretty accurate, since I can find much fainter satellites on other images. If anyone can figure out what satellite did this, please let me know. Here are the facts about the image:

Camera is facing South
Date and time: July 6, 2012 between 4:45:05 and 4:46:41
Field of view is about 95 degrees wide by 73 degrees high
Traveling from right to left through the constellation Pisces

Green Spiraling Meteor

2013-08-03T03:45:00.000-05:00

Click on the image for a larger view

While looking at the thousands of images I shot for the Milky Way time lapse I came across one with a fairly bright green meteor. One thing very cool is that I can see that it has a waviness to it instead of the normal straight line. Apparently the tiny pebble was oddly shaped causing it to spiral and vaporize as it hit the upper atmosphere at an extreme speed.

I have searched for other images of spiraling meteors but have not been able to find one. Apparently these are very rare. I found several sources of visual reports, but no photos. The earliest report was from a 1949 article in Popular Astronomy Journal.

Surely this can't be the only image of a spiraling meteor!

The Milky Way Timelapse and How I Created It

2013-08-03T02:09:00.001-05:00

The Video can be viewed at various resolutions. Once the video is running, choose them by clicking on the symbol that looks like the Sun at the lower right of the video. If you have a fast internet connection, it is best seen at 1080p and on a big monitor (Full Screen).

Here is a time lapse video from 3 nights in early July, 2013, of over 2000 images of the Milky Way. Shooting these was fairly straight forward. I set my Canon t4i with my 10-22mm f/3.5 lens on a tripod (the lens was set to 10mm at f/3.5). I used an intervalometer to shoot 30 second RAW exposures, all night long (about 7 hours each night), with a 2 second delay to allow the camera to file the image to the 32 Gig card. I also used an AC adapter so I wouldn't have to worry about a battery dying in the middle of the night and I used a dew heater around the lens to keep the dew off. The dew heater is a home made heater made from resistors and powered from a 12 volt power supply.

On the last night of shooting, I used a new toy that had just arrived in the mail. Between the tripod and the camera, I placed an iOptron SkyTracker. Normally, the SkyTracker is polar aligned and will follow the sky as tracks from East to West allowing me to take longer exposures with no star trails. Instead of polar aligning, however, I pointed the polar axis straight up. This allowed the camera to follow the Milky Way in azimuth, that is, horizontally from left to right. I didn't know if this would work, but I was pleasantly surprised. It worked better than I thought it would.

Once I had the images, I improved their look by working on them in Canon's Digital Professional software. It allows me to make adjustments to one image, then the software makes the same adjustment to the rest automatically. I converted the RAW images from high resolution images to much smaller, and workable, JPG images. To make the time lapse video I used ProShow Producer. It is normally used to make slide show type videos, but I figured out how to make it produce a time lapse sequence. This was done by telling the software to run each frame for zero time with an interval of .1 seconds between each frame. ProShow allowed me to add music and text to the video. Finally, Proshow has a menu choice for YouTube videos. It makes the video then uploads it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.