astrophotography

The late show

Posted on by Patrick
Aurora Borealis

About mid­night last night, after I got home from get­ting half an hour of chilly star trails (and charged up the bat­ter­ies the cold killed), I checked the space-weath­er app on my phone. It told me I had a strong chance of see­ing some auro­ra if I left like right now.

So I did, and between about 12:15 and 1 AM, I got almost 400 pho­tos of north­ern lights.

  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
  • Aurora Borealis
All pho­tos tak­en from 50th Street at the west­ern edge of town

And I made all 393 pho­tos into a 30-sec­ond time­lapse, too. (Every sec­ond of video rep­re­sents a minute of real time.)

Nerdy details: each pho­to is a 5‑second expo­sure, 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600. The pho­tos were edit­ed for brightness/contrast; the frames in the video are all straight-out-of-camera.

Star Trails

Posted on by Patrick
Star Trails

Warmer than it’s been, but still cold enough to kill two cam­era bat­ter­ies inside the space of ½ an hour. I gave up on see­ing any auro­ra and head­ed home to process what I got.

Update: As it turned out, I got some auro­ra after all.

About 170 pho­tos, 5 sec­onds each (for a total of about 15 min­utes of rota­tion), ISO 1600, 11mm, f/2.8.

Half-moon

Posted on by Patrick
The half-moon

There’s half a moon in the sky tonight. I snapped some quick pho­tos from my deck. It’s a bit chilly so I did­n’t spend much time out there.

The half-moon

Nerdy details: 1/100 sec­ond expo­sure, ISO 100, 250mm, f/5.6, hand­held. Pho­to was cropped and the colours tweaked a lit­tle bit in GIMP.

Geminids 2020

Posted on by Patrick
A meteor streaks over the horizon

The Gem­i­nids peak tonight. I went out in the coun­try­side for about half an hour. I saw a few mete­ors with the naked eye, and I man­aged to catch a few on cam­era. This is the bright­est one, by far, a green­ish streak just above the north­east­ern horizon.

View full size.

It was so cold my cam­era battery—fully charged when I left the house—lasted only 20 min­utes. This par­tic­u­lar shot was about 10 frames (2½ min­utes) before the bat­tery died.

Image processing: before and after

Posted on by Patrick

I took a cou­ple pic­tures of the Milky Way tonight, as is my wont, and decid­ed to present you with how it looked com­ing fresh out of my cam­era, and how it looks once I’ve cleaned it up. Enjoy!

Autumn Aurora

Posted on by Patrick
Aurora Borealis

Space Weath­er pre­dict­ed Arc­tic auro­ras (orig­i­nal­ly the storm was pre­dict­ed to be stronger, but got down­grad­ed). Some­times that turns out, so since it was clear last night, I head­ed out of town for about an hour.

When I ini­tial­ly set up, there was noth­ing real­ly hap­pen­ing, auro­ra-wise, but I decid­ed to shoot for a while any­ways. If noth­ing else, I’d have a half-hour star trails image. The moon was full, so I’d have a nice bright fore­ground, too.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Autumn Auro­ra” →