Star Trails

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

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

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.

Autumn Aurora

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”

Image Hill; fog

Milky Way from behind a tree

Last night Kath­leen sug­gest­ed I check out Image Hill for some astropho­tog­ra­phy. Since it was only five min­utes’ dri­ve from the farm, I checked it out.

I got about 25 min­utes’ worth of star trails (I set my timer for 30 min­utes but my cam­era bat­tery had oth­er ideas). 

Star Trails at Image Hill
Star Trails at Image Hill
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Image Hill; fog”

Clear skies at the farm

The halfway tree at night

We got to the farm last night in the dark, and the skies were clear and star­ry. So, after vis­it­ing for a bit, I took my cam­era and tri­pod out in the lane.