 |
| Moon in lunar eclipse, perched on San Francisco's Transamerica Building |
In this example, I predicted where to catch the full moon during a lunar eclipse so its path would pass the tip of the Transamerica Building in San Francisco. Using eclipse predictions, lunar elevation angle and compass direction, I used the height of the tower to predict how far away I'd need to stand and in what compass direction. I mapped that point on Google Earth, showed up a little early to start shooting hundreds of photos to created the time-lapse sequence, and it turned out that I pretty much nailed it! The center of the moon passed right across the tip of the tower.
New tools make this sort of planning easier than ever! We'll be demonstrating the PhotoPills app. If you'd like to purchase the app to follow along on your smartphone as we show the features, follow this link to buy it: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photopills/id596026805?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
Here's a time-lapse video I created of the moon as it approached and passed the Transamerica Building:
This video was featured on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog on Discover Magazine:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/12/lunar-eclipse-time-lapse/
Lunar eclipse time lapse : Bad Astronomy
 |
| Moon Over Half Dome, Yosemite National Park |
Update August 2014: Thanks to the +Royal Observatory Greenwich in London for including my moon rise image in your video about the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2104 competition!
Read my 2012 blog post about my pursuit of this image:Moon Rise over Half Dome in Yosemite
See my notes below for tutorial blog posts and a copy of the demonstration/tutorial video described in this post. Here's the Royal Observatory's new video on the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition:
Here are some of my lunar photography and astronomical alignment examples for you to enjoy:
Moon and Sun, a set on Flickr.
I've been teaching people for years how to pursue lunar photography. I wrote a blog post back in 2006 on anticipating shots like these:
Plan Ahead for Great Full Moon Rise and Set Shots!
That planning got even easier with the creation of apps like +The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE), as I describe in this 2011 update blog post:
Put Sunset Full Moon Rise Dates on Your Calendar
These days in addition to +The Photographer's Ephemeris I also use +PhotoPills, StarWalk and Sky Safari+ to plan my shots:
http://youtu.be/Wgb_r9JlKRM?list=PLlLN6Bdq3jrnAwmOOhU0TufC9XsjbEiK2I've been teaching people for years how to pursue lunar photography. I wrote a blog post back in 2006 on anticipating shots like these:
Plan Ahead for Great Full Moon Rise and Set Shots!
That planning got even easier with the creation of apps like +The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE), as I describe in this 2011 update blog post:
Put Sunset Full Moon Rise Dates on Your Calendar
These days in addition to +The Photographer's Ephemeris I also use +PhotoPills, StarWalk and Sky Safari+ to plan my shots:
- PhotoPills: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photopills/id596026805?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
- The Photographers Ephemeris: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-photographers-ephemeris/id366195670?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
- StarWalk: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-walk-5-stars-astronomy/id295430577?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
- SkySafari 4+: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skysafari-4-plus/id766939884?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
If you find this sort of information valuable, given the new tendency of sites like Google+ and Facebook to filter out the posts of people you haven't specifically interacted with lately, you may want to subscribe to updates to this blog through NetworkedBlogs in the right column. Since social media networks are getting much less reliable at distributing my shooting opportunity notices, tutorials, workshop announcements, or simply my latest work, people who want to stay in touch may need to connect with me across multiple networks to increase the odds of seeing a post: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, my blogs, or wherever you're active online. It's frustrating and a little sad that social networks seem to be stepping back from the opportunity to provide reliable delivery of high quality content to people who want to see it!
Here are some of the places you can connect with me online:
Wordpress: www.JeffSullivanPhotography.
Blogger: http://activesole.blogspot.
Google+ : https://plus.google.com/+
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/
Tumblr: http://jeffsullivan.tumblr.
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment