Analysis of a Lunar Eclipse Shoot

I'll be presenting in Woodland, California next Tuesday, February 20 at 7 pm in case you might like to attend. The Woodland Camera Forum meets in Norton Hall, 70 Cottonwood Street, Woodland, California: www.davisenterprise.com/arts/jeff-sullivan-presents-work-at-photography-group/

The formatting of this post got all messed up when i tried to transfer it form my original Wordpress blog post on my Web site here: http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/2018/02/08/lunar-eclipse-photography-january-31/
I'll fix it as time permits, which might not be a while, so best if you read it over there for now!



For the January 31, 2018 lunar eclipse, my planning started weeks in advance, looking at the timing of the eclipse, the direction of the moon, and at prior shots like the moon set above from 2010 that seemed like a good concept to re-shoot with a moon in some phase of eclipse.  I decided to try to place the moon on top of the South Tower of the bridge, worked out the geometry to estimate the moon's elevation, looked in an app to determine its compass direction at that time, and where I should stand.

 So after you decide to shoot an early morning lunar eclipse, what's the next logical thing to do? Pick a spot for the prior sunset of course. Marin County's Rodeo Beach fit the bill nicely for a relaxing sunset.

  A trip to Japan Center for sushi later, and it's too early for sleep, so a little night photography along the San Francisco waterfront helps put a few more travel images on the card and burn off a few dinner calories.
 

Wake up at 3am, and go get a nice moon shot from the Crissy Field area:

This image was exposed for 15 seconds at f/8, ISO 200 on a Canon EOS 70D with a lens at 381mm using a Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS L Series lens plus EF 2X III teleconverter. After the APS-C crop factor, the equivalent focal length was 610mm! The camera setup was on an iOptron SkyTracker, so the longest exposures in the sequences I was shooting could easily be 15 to 20 seconds at ISO 200. What next? You've chosen the spot anticipating the moon approaching the Golden Gate Bridge, so when it's close enough you can include the bridge in compositions:

 

 But the real alignment you've calculated from the height of the bridge, the distance to the bridge, and the compass direction is the moon passing the top of the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. But you forgot to subtract out the elevation of your shooting position from the height of the bridge, so the moon is about 1/2 moon width, about 0.25 degrees, too high. So you move about a dozen feet to your left, compose over the shoulders of a couple of photographers, and get the composition that you envisioned weeks earlier:

The recent weather and the forecast called for partly cloudy conditions, and at times there was definitely a thin haze that the moon was shining through, but there was also a challenge that I don't usually have to deal with back home in the high desert: condensation!  For a while I had to wipe my lens every few shots to remove it.  Astrophotographers sometimes use heaters on their telescopes, photographers shooting on a dewy morning can improvise using gaffer's tape and hand warmers. That's not the end of the fun, as sunset light paints the sky while the moon dropped into the bridge.  Fortunately the atmospheric haze also cleared up significantly.



Sunrise approaches as the partially-eclipsed moon sets behind the Golden Gate Bridge.[/caption] As it descends further, while shooting the lunar eclipse through San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, for a matter of seconds I decided to try to silhouette a vehicle against the setting, partially-eclipsed moon. A large delivery truck fit the bill nicely. I was shooting at 400mm, so I had to anticipate the movement of the vehicle enough ahead of time to leave mirror lock-up on!
 
Note the rough edge to the moon. At this high degree of telephoto, on the moon in the lower couple of degrees of elevation when our view of it is through a lot of turbulent air, the view of the moon is visibly distorted. No doubt there will be many faked shots from this eclipse as usual, and a recent article on FStoppers discusses some of the ways you can spot them. So to summarize, anticipating an interesting place to capture the mono alongside earth-bound features using apps like PhotoPills and The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE) enables the capture of many compositions beyond "Just another lunar eclipse shot"... not that there's anything wrong with that! So once the eclipse is "in the can" (like a reel of exposed movie film), what next? Think of something to shoot while you're in the are, or on your way home! A quick detour to the California Coast, the Mendocino area in this case, fit the bill nicely. Astronomical events aren't just opportunities for astrophotography, they are a great excuse to get out. travel, and shoot!  The weather can be surprisingly warm along the California Coast in the winter given the heat sink effect of the water and the lower winds compared to summer.  Temperatures in the high 50s by noon and walking down Main Street Mendocino, I had to take off and carry my jacket as I became too hot to wear it.

Mercury Transit of the Sun Coming May 9, 2016

Venus transit of the sun June 5, 2012

There will a a transit of Mercury across the face of the sun, as seen from earth, on May 9, 2016.  This article on timeanddate.com can tell you when the mercury transit may be available from your location.  It also provides links to information on proper eye protection!

When the planet Venus was scheduled to pass in front of the sun in early June 2012 I wanted to capture the event, but I didn't want to simply record a dark spot in front of a bright one.  So I decided to place earth-bound objects in front of the sun to capture the Sun, Earth and Venus in the same shot.  And why not... the next opportunity to capture a Venus transit across the face of the sun wouldn't come for another 105 years!

My setup for the Venus transit enabled me to shoot it at 400mm:

• Canon EOS 5D Mark III 
• EF 70-200mm f.4 IS L lens 
• 2X III Teleconverter
• Solar film for photographing the sun

Since I was including foreground objects but wanted to catch Venus and the sun as well, depth of field was a concern, so exposures were captured at f/32, 1/500 second, ISO 200.  That's with the solar filter reducing incoming light.

The setup I'm considering for the Mercury transit will enable me to shoot it at 640mm effective:

• Canon EOS 70D 
• EF 70-200mm f.4 IS L lens 
• 2X III Teleconverter
• Solar film for photographing the sun

This time I'll may track the sun and go for a composite photo showing the path of mercury across it.  In that case I could use an f-stop like f/11 to reduce any image softening from diffraction, so something like f/11, 1/2000 second, ISO 100.

Be careful if you try to capture photos of this event.  The sun can fry your sensor, so don't leave the shutter open in live view for long.  

I'm going to go get a camera or two set up and focused now!

"After centuries of trying, only photographic technology could measure the ‘Transit of Venus’ and tell us our position in the solar system." - +Royal Observatory Greenwich

Stunning Sunset Mono Lake Moon Rise Coming December 24

Mono Lake moon rise November 16, 2013

A few times each year, the moon rises at just the right time to be visible during sunset, while there's enough light on the landscape to capture that in the photo as well.  That will happen this month on December 24, Christmas Eve.  I'm not suggesting that you ditch the family to go chase the moon, just step outside at sunset, look to the east, and you'll have one more reason for the night to be a particularly memorable one.

If you might also want to photograph the moon, I've collected some notes on this blog post that I started in 2006:

How to Plan Great Full Mooon Rise and Set Shots
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2006/11/plan-ahead-for-great-full-moon-rise-and.html

I'm not sure if we'll head down to Mono Lake.  I've been going there for decades and my kids have been going there for all of their lives, so it holds a lot of sentimental value for us. It's pretty close by, so if the weather is nice, we may head down there.  The light could be particularly nice around: 4:35 - 4:55 pm.  Ping me on social media if your'e down there, in case we're standing a few feet down the shore from each other!

Mono Lake moon rise November 2010. How to plan great full moon rise and set photos: https://t.co/yKX1p2lNvt #Canon pic.twitter.com/taLY0bi1qv

— DSLR astronomer (@DSLRastronomy) December 11, 2015

Moon, Comet and Venus Continue Their Dance

Comet C/2014 US10 Catalina (blue-green fuzzy dot to the left), the moon and Venus to the right

I predicted last week that the viewing would get better all week for Comet Catalina, with an interesting configuration in the sky with the moon and Venus joining the comet this morning (above).  The three celestial bodies played hide and seek for hours after they rose, then the hazy cloud cover seemed to close, so I caught a few final exposures before picking up my tripod and heading inside.  Fortunately the very last few frames did let all three shine through the clouds just enough that I could show them to you here.

The 14% crescent moon was a lot brighter than the comet, but it'll only be an 8% sliver tomorrow morning, and its rise will follow Venus and the comet, so comet photography will be good before the moon rises, then you can try for all three again as the moon rises.

The image above was captured on a Canon 5D Mark III and EF 85mm f.1.8 lens and cropped from the larger field of view.  The 85mm lens should just fit the three objects again tomorrow, or I might go to 70mm for a wide shot like this.  For shots of the comet only, I'll probably use my Canon EOS 70D on a sky tracking mount, perhaps with a Canon EF 70-300mm f.4-5.6 IS lens to get an effective focal length of up to 480mm.

The screen shot to the right shows what the configuration will look like tomorrow.

Viewing Comet Catalina Gets Better All Week!

Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina at 6;10 am December 1, captured on a Canon 5DMarkIII with 85mm lens

Catalina December 1 at an effective focal length of 480 mm.

In late November I retweeted a link to an +EarthSky article describing a comet that would be brightening in the coming weeks, Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina.  This morning Comet Catalina was visible below Venus in the early morning sky to the East, as shown in the image above from 6:11 am this morning.

I also captured it at 300 mm on a Canon EOS 70D (right).  Due to bright moonlight, its tails were not easy to pick up, even at an effective focal length of 480 mm.  Over the coming week, the sky will get darker as the moon approaches its new moon phase, so the Comet and its tails should get progressively easier to see.  In the meantime, using a tracking mount would enable brighter exposures with less noise, so better results than this quick catch on a fixed tripod are certainly possible, but the best results should come as the moon gets out of the way November 8 and later, weather permitting.

Catalina with Venus & moon 12/7

Early on the morning of  December 7, there will be an interesting configuration in the sky as it rises to the left of Venus and the moon as a 14.7% crescent.  The moon rises at around 3:20 am with a zero degree elevation horizon such as the ocean followed by Venus and then Catalina around 3:40, so look for the trio clearing a moderately low land horizon around 3:45 am.  These times vary slightly with your latitude, but you can look up exact times in programs such as +The Photographer's Ephemeris or +PhotoPills.  On the morning of November 8, the situation will be similar but with the moon at 8.3%, following the earlier rise of Comet Catalina and Venus.

My 85 mm shot at the top is a four second exposure at f/2.8, ISO 3200 on a standard tripod with no sky-tracking mount, so many DSLR owners can start capturing it, whenever the sky is clear for them in the next week or two.

You can look up the comet in an app such as SkySafari+ to see exactly when it will rise in your location each morning.

Good luck with your viewing and photography!  Weather permitting, I hope to have some results to show you at some point in the December 7-14 timeframe!  Here are some of my prior comet photos on Flickr to entertain you in the meantime: https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=23183960%40N00&sort=date-taken-desc&text=comets&view_all=1

If you have a dark sky, watch for Comet Catalina before dawn! https://t.co/ELSmctWqCP pic.twitter.com/W5DzanagA0

— EarthSky (@earthskyscience) November 23, 2015

Planets, Orionids and Zodiacal Light

Meteor with Venus, Jupiter and Mars rising in zodiacal light during the Orionids, October 22, 2015

Who saw or photographed some Orionid meteors over the last night or two?  In the photo above, a meteor crosses over the path of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, rising in zodiacal light during the Orionid meteor shower around 5 am this morning, October 22, 2015.

Although the streak is clearly a meteor (note the characteristic green color), technically it's not an Orionid, since the radiant point for the Orionid meteor shower is out of the upper right corner of the frame.  So this meteor is traveling at nearly a right angle to what its trajectory would be if it were one of the Orionids.

It may however be a Leo Minorid meteor, since its radiant point is to the left of Venus Jupiter and Mars this morning.  The Leo Minorid meteor shower peaks the morning of October 23, but it is a minor shower with an estimated 2 meteors per hour, but minor showers sometimes have an unexpectedly high rate, so tomorrow morning could offer a surprise from the Leo Minorids along with after-peak Orionids.

There are also random, sporadic meteors, particularly in the early morning, as your position on the earth rotates to the leading side of the earth as it travels through space rotating around the sun.

The Zodiacal light is sunlight shining off of dust in our solar system, the light tilted up from the lower left in the photo above.  You can experience the Zodiacal light, or false dawn, this time of year when a a pyramid-shaped glow can be seen in the east an hour before dawn's first light (or 80 to 120 minutes before sunrise). This light is caused by sunlight reflecting off of dust particles in space in the same plane as earth and can resemble the lights from a city. It is tilted to follow the same ecliptic plane that the planets travel in.  Zodiacal light is best seen under dark skies, in places with minimal light pollution.  You can catch the Zodiacal light for another 2 or 3 mornings this month, but after that the moon will be too full and it will no longer set early enough to leave you with a dark enough sky to see this pre-dawn light.

You can see the Zodiacal light as the planets rise in this time-lapse video captured this morning before and twilight light started to brighten the sky:

Venus, Jupiter and Mars in Zodiacal light during the Orionid meteor shower this morning

Total Lunar Eclipse September 27 2015

Total Lunar Eclipse September 27, 2015: wide angle time-lapse and 640mm effective live action footage from the total lunar eclipse last night.  The partly cloudy forecast and webcam images didn't look all that promising in the Eastern Sierra yesterday afternoon, so I ditched my plans to pursue one of several compositions that I had worked out, and I stayed home to see if the moon would make any appearance at all.

I watched for about an hour after it was supposed to rise at 6:44, but there was no sign of it, so I left my camera shooting a sequence of images for a time-lapse video, and I went back inside.  A few minutes later, the fully eclipsed moon was visible through a break in the clouds, from 7:56 - 8:06.  I came back out a while later, but the moon was behind the clouds, so I didn't know that it had made a brief appearance until I reviewed the images later!

As the moon was more than halfway through the partial, umbral phase coming out of total eclipse, it emerged from the clouds and starting lighting up the clouds and landscape with increasingly bright light.

As the face of the moon returned to fully lit in the penumbral phase of the eclipse, there was a nice halo of color around the moon, so I set up a second camera to capture that.  I used my Canon EOS 70D with the EF 70-200mm f/4 IS L Series lens and a 2X teleconverter, for an effective focal length of 640mm.  The clouds were moving pretty quickly, so I also captures dome live video of the clouds moving across the face of the moon.  I had the camera on a sky-tracking mount, so the moon remains essentially still in the frame.

I didn't shoot where I expected or capture what I anticipated, but by being there to catch changes in the weather, I captured some interesting results.

Perseid Meteor Shower 2015

Comet Swift-Tuttle only passes the earth and circles the sun once every 133 years, but the earth passes through its trail of dust every year.  The debris field is large, so Perseid meteors may be seen on nights from July 17 through August 24.  The earth passes through the most dense portion of the comet's dust trail on the night of August 12-13, so that is when the peak, or maximum hourly rate of meteors, is seen.

On any given night, the sun sets as your position on the earth rotates away from the sun, then around midnight you rotate to a point directly opposite the sun. As the earth also moves in its orbit around the sun, your position on the earth is just starting to rotate to the side of the earth leading its movement through space, which collides with more debris. So meteor rates go up starting at midnight. At dawn you're approximately in the middle of the face of the earth as it flies through space, so meteor rates continue to climb slightly towards dawn. So the best bet in the evening is after midnight, in the last hours of darkness before the dawn's oncoming light brightens the sky.

This year I pursued the Perseids on the mornings of August 9, 11, 12 and 13. The best viewing was on the peak morning of the 13th, as expected. The composite photo above shows many of the meteors that my camera picked up over the course of nearly four hours.

I also assembled a time-lapse video that condenses several hours of meteor activity into seconds of video. You can see it on Vimeo here:


Perseid Meteor Shower 2015 from Jeff Sullivan on Vimeo.

Not everything that moves in the video are meteors; the meteors are the brief streaks of light, the slower ones are airplanes.  As you see the Milky Way and stars move, that is from the rotation of the earth. You can also see smoke from forest fires.

According to Wikipedia, Comet Swift–Tuttle has been described as "the single most dangerous object known to humanity". But don't worry, its next close encounter with the earth isn't expected until the year 4479. With a nucleus 26 kilometers across, if there were an impact, the force is estimated to be 27 times larger than the one which formed the Chicxulub crater beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is believed to have caused the extinction the dinosaurs.

Doomsday preppers take note, you only have 2464 years to get ready!

The 2015 Perseid Meteor Shower is Underway

Perseid Meteor and Milky Way Over the Sierra Nevada, by Jeff Sullivan on 500px

Comet Swift-Tuttle only passes the earth and circles the sun once every 133 years, but the earth passes through its trail of dust every year.  The debris field is large, so Perseid meteors may be seen on nights from July 17 through August 24.  The earth passes through the most dense portion of the comet's dust trail on the night of August 12-13, so that is when the peak, or maximum hourly rate of meteors, will be seen.  The rates will also be high throughout the August 11 - 14 period, so you can look for Perseid meteors any or all nights this week.

Below is a video that I assembled in 2009 from several nights photographing the Perseid meteor shower.  It is a time-lapse video that condenses several hours of meteor activity into seconds of video:


Not everything that moves in the video are meteors; the meteors are the brief streaks of light, the slower ones are airplanes.  As you see the Milky Way and stars move, that is from the rotation of the earth.

You can also see haze that is smoke from forest fires that year.  I may have similar challenges this year due to the fires currently raging during California's drought.  Already the photo I captured above from last Saturday night is darker than usual, due to smoke from a wildfire.

Chasing the Aurora Borealis in the Eastern Sierra, June 23, 2015

I read online yesterday that a particularly intense solar magnetic storm might enable the aurora borealis to be visible across much of the United States, as far south as San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. I could see from early results posted from the East Coast and Missouri that the event was progressing as expected.

The aurora borealis tends to be strongest in the location on the earth opposite the sun, and at 11 pm the aurora forecasting apps were showing the strongest magnetic field dipping down in the middle of the United States, so I had roughly one to two hours before that strongest part of the storm would reach us in the Western U.S..

The best visibility of the aurora would be to the north, but I live south of the light pollution from the Carson Valley and Minden/Gardnerville Nevada. There is also the Washignton Fire sending smoke in that direction, so I headed a few miles south then up into the Sierra Nevada to get further from lights and above the smoke.

Partway up the steep road I shot to the north, but the light pollution was too great, so I continued higher.  I tried shooting more to the east to cut out light pollution to the north, and there was a promising increase in green and red color in the sky, but common airglow can cause both of those colors, so I needed to try shooting a sequence of images and create a time-lapse video to see if the red-pink color on the horizon would dance like you see in aurora videos.

Sure enough, there was some aurora color on the horizon, and it gained in strength, shooting upwards into space and dancing across the sky:

 

I shot the time-lapse video from the high, dry, clear skies of the Sierra Nevada, near the Little Antelope Pack Station above the town of Walker, California: https://youtu.be/NaQiOQrQ_S8?list=PL6012D9822C1BA1E7

For comparison, I also shot the sky more to the south- southeast, to get a reading of the ambient green and red airglow colors in the sky.

It was cool to see the aurora borealis all the way down here along the California - Nevada border.  The forecast for tonight isn't quite as strong, but it's a rare opportunity that is hard to resist, so I may have to go back out and try again!


           
www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

The rays of red light could be 65 miles high above the earth, and 600 miles north!

Moon, Venus Jupiter Will Line Up Tonight

Tonight we'll have the Moon, Venus and Jupiter lining up in the evening twilight sky, with a 9% crescent moon about 9% high in the sky around 9 pm (in a mid-California latitude).

Yosemite Valley isn't normally where I would go to see expansive views of the night sky, but on February 24, 2012 I was fortunate to arrive at Sentinel Bridge over the Merced River right before the moon set behind the valley rim, with Venus and Jupiter lined up above. I was able to capture this frame with the moon and Venus reflected.

Tomorrow evening the moon will be brighter and set later, forming a triangle with Jupiter and Venus.  With the evening sky also darker, it will be reminiscent of the Venus, Jupiter Moon triangle I caught last August:

Photos of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter Conjunction August 23, 2014
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2014/08/photos-of-moon-venus-jupiter-conjunction.html

Here's a photo of those three members of our solar system rising on the eastern horizon:

Then Saturday night the moon will be a brighter, wider crescent, and set later in a flatter triangle configuration, more reminiscent of this one earlier this year:

Crescent 9% moon set tonight, then Venus, Jupiter. Seen in Feb video w/Mars: http://t.co/2U0lvFpySU #astronomy pic.twitter.com/GwA8WbF5z0

— Jeff Sullivan Photo (@JeffSullPhoto) June 18, 2015

The easiest event of the next 3 nights to catch with earthly terrain will be the more linear configuration tonight, while twilight light still lights up your foreground landscape.

At the very end of the month, on the night of June 30, Venus and Jupiter will pass within 1/3 of a degree of each other, less than the diameter of the moon.  It will be similar to the conjunction (appulse) that I caught last year on August 18 on my Canon 70 with EF 70-200 mm lens and 2X teleconverter, but this time Venus will appear as a crescent.

Chasing the Moon: Lunar Eclipse Photography October 2014

Partially eclipsed moon setting behind the Sierra Nevada

Lunar eclipses can be a fun challenge to photograph.  The moon is so much brighter than the landscape, most photographers simply choose to expose for either the moon detail or the landscape with the too-bright moon over it.  Even the exposure for the moon itself can be a challenge if you try to capture detail in both the lit and shaded portions of the moon's surface while the moon is partially eclipsed.  Of course the challenge only gets greater if you try to zoom in on the moon's surface, and the moon orbits the earth and moves relative to your position on the surface of the rotating earth.

I captured the moon from three places on the night of October 7-8, 2014 in the dark skies of the Eastern Sierra: first from the shoreline of Mono Lake as the full moon rose just before sunset, then from the shoreline of Convict Lake as the moon entered totality and then exited totality just as it was setting behind the Sierra Nevada, and finally from Minaret Vista as the moon, still in the penumbral phase of eclipse, set behind The Minarets just before dawn.  

Composite shot captured using an ultra-wide lens

The Mono Lake sunset moon rise was pretty straightforward, since the moon and landscape can both be picked up clearly in a single exposure then the moon rises just before sunset.  The moon went behind a cloud as it continued to rise during blue hour, enabling more nice shots without having to process multiple exposures.

I tried a number of things at once during the eclipse.  I had three cameras going, one to capture only a wide angle sequence of the landscape and moon and its reflection in Convict Lake as the moon went in and back out of totality, a second camera to capture a telephoto time-lapse sequence of the eclipse on a sky-tracking mount, and a third one simply to assess exposure changes, so I could reset the other two cameras on the fly to follow the changing brightness of the moon.

Since the moon takes a while to get fully out of the the earth's shadow, once the moon set at Convict Lake, I had time drive to Minaret Vista and arrive in tome to capture it setting.

As a major bonus, I realized that the blue dot i was picking up just to the left of the moon during totality was the planet Uranus!

I was pretty tired after getting very little sleep that night, but of course it was completely worth the time and effort.  I can't wait for the next lunar eclipse, coming up this fall.

Update June 2015: I'd like to thank the +The Huffington Post UK for featuing my composite eclipse sequence image in an article featuring photos entered in the 2015 Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest conducted by the Royal Observatory at the +Royal Museums Greenwich : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/03/astronomy-photographer-of-the-year_n_7500346.html?1433327342 I'll place more of my photos from this lunar eclipse on the new app +dripthat: http://bit.ly/1dhaequ

The blue planet Uranus could be seen just to the left of the eclipsed moon during the total eclipse in October 2014

Applause for the Appulse: Moon, Mars and Venus

Venus, Mars and the moon setting over Mt. Whitney

I thought that I was having a good day to catch some nice photos of the crescent moon by Mars and Venus last month, setting behind Mount Whitney.

Then I put a sequence of photos together in a time-lapse video, and the event came to life!


I posted a link to my Twitter account @JeffSullPhoto, and +Philip Plait embedded the copy of my video on Vimeo in a post on his +Bad Astronomy blog on +Slate:
"Venus, Mars, and the Moon Go to Sleep".
He tweeted a link:

Watch a short, lovely time-lapse of the Moon, Mars, & Venus going night-night. http://t.co/fU7Z2HgHoJ pic.twitter.com/HaU6MMpSym
— Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) March 8, 2015

Then the +California Academy of Sciences tweeted a link as well:

Oh-so-lovely time-lapse of when Venus, Mars & the Moon recently "met" in the sky: http://t.co/gLbZeXZoNO #appulse pic.twitter.com/glqzmeL2hG
— CA AcademyOfSciences (@calacademy) March 9, 2015

It's cool to have astronomers and scientists recognize and share my astrophotography!  Check out Phil's blog post if you have the time.  He always adds some nice scientific context.  What most of us call a "conjunction" is actually called an "appluse".

Massive Asteroid BL86 Approaches Earth

Mountain-sized asteroid BL86 came hurtling towards its near-miss with earth today, and I caught it on my camera as it approached late Sunday night. Here's the time-lapse video, both an edge to edge 16:9 crop at 200mm, then a second copy cropped to 1080p. Look in the center as it moves from lower right center to upper left center:



 Both clips in the video were assembled from 119 separate images of the sky, taken with a full frame DSLR and 70-200 mm lens, on a star-tracking mount. Here's a composite image assembled from the first 60 photos.

If you missed the asteroid Sunday and Monday, +NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a chart to help you find it in the sky into the night of Tuesday, January 27 in the U.S., Wednesday January 28 GMT:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news188.html

Although the asteroid is bright enough to see with binoculars, it probably won't do you much good to try to find it that way. The asteroid moves so slowly, it's very difficult to tell from the smaller stars in the background.  In the time-lapse video you see it move because several minutes of time are shown in each second of video.

Since it's easier to see the asteroid that way, I just pointed my camera where the asteroid should be, and I set an external timer to have it capture photos for a couple of hours. I used a star-tracking mount so the area of sky it was in wouldn't move away form where the camera was pointing.

 For the video, you can adjust the playback on YouTube from its standard low resolution playback to as high as 1080p HD.

 I also have a copy down-converted to 720p HD on Vimeo if that works better for your Internet connection:


Asteroid BL86 Approaches Earth from Jeff Sullivan on Vimeo.

Four Nights With Comet Lovejoy

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy on the evening of Monday, January 19, 2015.

Last night I enjoyed the best viewing conditions for capturing Comet Lovejoy so far.  Seen under the dark skies of California's Eastern Sierra region and with no moon in the sky, even its long tail showed up well.  Knowing where to look (near Pleiades) I was able to just see it with my eyes, and find it with a 70-200 mm lens.  Using a Canon 70D DLSR, its "crop sensor" gave me the equivalent of 320 mm focal length.  I even added a 2X teleconverter to bring the effective focal length to a massive 640 mm!

I used an external interval timer to capture one-minute exposures until the camera's battery power ran out nearly 2.5 hours later.  I had the camera placed on an inexpensive star-tracking mount to follow the comet as the earth rotated.  I converted the resulting 147 exposures to video, and with 640 mm zoom, over the course of 2 hours you can see the comet move against the starry background!

Here are the time-lapse video results of several nights shooting, at effective focal lengths of 28 mm, 35 mm, 320 mm and 640 mm.  The video is best viewed full screen, switched to HD 1080p quality:


I hope that I get more clear nights this month to shoot the comet, as it gradually moves away from the earth and the sun on its big lap of our solar system.

Photograph Comet Lovejoy in January

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy on January 6, 2015.

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy passes closest to earth tonight, offering our brightest viewing of it for several thousand more years.  It will brighten as it continues to approach the sun, but appear to fade in brightness as it recedes from earth, and as those two trends work against each other we'll have continued good viewing conditions for the next couple of weeks. 

The recent full moon challenged viewing, but tonight, January 7, in the Northern Hemisphere the moon rises about 3 hours after sunset.  Once the sky is fully dark (approximately 6:30 pm in mid northern latitudes), you'll have roughly an hour of dark sky viewing before the approaching moon brightens your sky.  Tomorrow, January 8, your dark sky window extends roughly 6:30 - 8:30.

You don't need fancy equipment to see this comet.  It's bright enough to see with binoculars, or in test exposures taken with a 24mm or 50mm lens or to find in a 70-200 mm zoom at the widest 70 mm focal length.  For the next few nights Comet Lovejoy will be to the right of the constellation Orion.  +Universe Today provides a handy finder chart in their article "Finding Lovejoy: How to Follow the Path of Comet 2014 Q2 Through January".

I captured the test image above with the nearly-full moon in the sky, using a Canon 70D DSLR and EF 70-300 mm f/4-5.6 lens on a star-tracking mount.  If you don't have a star tracking mount, no problem, just use your widest lens (I'd use an EF 16-35 mm f/2.8 lens wide open at f/2.8 and at it's widest focal length of 16mm).  Crank up the ISO and take a number of long test exposures to determine which combination of ISO and exposure time work well on your camera.

If the skies remain clear I should be able to capture even better images during moonless hours in the coming nights.

Geminid Meteor Shower 2014 in HD

Time-lapse video footage from the Geminid meteor shower on the nights of December 13 and 14, 2014. Shot at Topaz Lake in the Eastern Sierra region, on the California-Nevada border.

Here's a description of the Geminid meteor shower from NASA:

"Geminids are pieces of debris from an object called 3200 Phaethon. Long thought to be an asteroid, Phaethon is now classified as an extinct comet. Basically it is the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun. Earth runs into a stream of debris from 3200 Phaethon every year in mid-December, causing meteors to fly from the constellation Gemini. When the Geminids first appeared in the early 19th century, shortly before the U.S. Civil War, the shower was weak and attracted little attention. There was no hint that it would ever become a major display."

Composite photos showing multiple 2014 Geminid meteors

I'll be teaching photographers how to capture meteor showers in a photography workshop during the Geminid meteor shower in Death Valley in December 2015: www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

#Geminids #meteorshower #science #breakingnews #astronomy +Death Valley Workshops 

Leonid Meteor Shower: Timelapse HD Video

Leonid Meteor Shower : Timelapse HD Video, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan.

You should see two big ones top center, then a lot of little ones down near the horizon after that.

Assembled from 224 30 second photos taken last night from 1-3am in the Eastern Sierra, California, during the Leonid meteor shower in 2009.

All I can say now in 2014 is wow, my technique has progressed a lot since 2009!

Catch the Leonid Meteor Shower Nov 17/18!

Catch the Leonid Meteor Shower Nov 17/18!, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan.

The Leonid Meteor Shower, one of the best meteor showers of the year, is happening this week, peaking around November 17/18. The meteors appear to originate from the constellation Leo.  The radiant point that the meteors seem to originate from rises slightly north of due east shortly after after 11 pm.

Long, earth-grazing meteors could be visible coming out of the eastern horizon before the radiant point rises. You can download an app such as StarWalk to a smartphone or tablet to make identification of the constellation and radiant point easy. As night progresses the portion of the earth that you're standing on rotates around to the forward path of the planet hurtling through space, where it collides with more space debris.  The path of the earth is due east at midnight, so the sky and atmosphere above you acts like a big scoop collecting meteors and creating long fireball trails.  The eastern half of your sky can collide with slightly more debris at that point, and more and more of the sky above you is directly facing the direction the earth is travelling as dawn approaches.  That's why early morning hours are often advised for meteor shower watching.

For 2014 however the moon will rise around 3 am at mid northern latitudes, so the best viewing will be roughly midnight to 2:30 am. Adjust your shooting direction to accommodate the east to west movement of Leo as it seems to circle the North Star and rises towards nearly overhead and slightly northeast as dawn approaches.

Check the weather forecast and moon rise times in your area to fine tune your viewing experience. To find a prime viewing spot, travel east away from cities to put the light pollution at your back. Good luck!

Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks October 21-22!

An Orionid meteor next to the constellation Orion

The annual Orionid meteor shower is created when Earth passes through trails of comet debris left in space long ago by Halley's Comet as it orbits around the sun. The meteors, or "shooting stars", develop when pieces of rock typically no larger than a pea, and mostly the size of a grain of sand, vaporize in Earth's upper atmosphere.

This is a composite shot of the best meteors that I caught during the Orionid meteor shower in 2014 over the course of several hours in Central Nevada:

Orionid Meteor Shower 2014

I used a star-tracking mount to follow Orion and produce that composite, so when I created a time-lapse from the same footage, it turned out like this:

 


For a perspective fixed on the ground with the sky moving, here's a time-lapse video from chasing the Orionid meteor shower in 2012 in the Mono Basin in the Eastern Sierra:



In 2014 Liz Horton at +ABC11-WTVD in Raleigh for using this Orionid Meteor shower time-lapse video to inform viewers about the Orionid meteor shower.  Here's ABC11's report informing viewers of the upcoming shower: http://abc11.com/weather/orionid-meteor-shower-visible-tuesday-night-/359788/

My 2015 Orionids photo featuring Venus, Jupiter and Mars has done well  on +Twitter so far:

Venus, Jupiter & Mars in zodiacal light and a meteor this morning #Orionids #CanonFavPic #nightphotography #Nevada pic.twitter.com/ljxyq1siAo

— Jeff Sullivan Photo (@JeffSullPhoto) October 22, 2015

Where will you pursue this year's Orionids?  In 2015, I suspect that the morning of the 23rd could be good after the moon sets.