View allAll Photos Tagged ALIGNMENT
Happy Earth Day!
Despite continued vigorous search, astronomers have yet to find another planet like Earth. All around us, we can easily see the unique beauty and qualities of our planet. Yet at the same time, we also witness its abuse through environmental mismanagement and unchecked pollution.
Among the five major types of pollution, I'm passionate about raising awareness of and fighting against light pollution. Here in the Southwest, we have some of the darkest night skies. However, many around the world have never seen the Milky Way. The disappearance of dark skies has impacts beyond stargazing including wildlife safety and energy conservation. Start today and do your part to help control light pollution and preserve our dark skies!
www.darksky.org/5-things-you-can-do-to-protect-the-night-...
For this shot, I chose a night where a 20% moon would be setting right before the Milky Way would be in perfect position over Zion Canyon. I shot the foreground with the moonlight and then shot the night sky shortly after the moon had set (all from the same tripod position). This was essential to be able to bring contrast and light into this dark canyon.
Some water drop photography. This shot was quite unusual, all in a row but the bottom drop was a strange shape!
Almost perfect alignment and symmetry. There are about 25 of those up-squirts in the fountain.
Civic Center, Santa Clara, California.
I took advantage of the New Moon and clear skies, and drove out to Coleyville (southwest of Brisbane) last night for some Milky Way photography. These are panoramas taken with my EOS R and Samyang 24mm f/1.4 lens.
Three of my favorite shots from the planetary alignment on February 20, 2015. Pigeon Point Lighthouse is in the foreground. The advancing fog bank caused the composition to change, with the planets and moon ducking in and out of sight. Finally, it swallowed them all.
Sony A7S, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm, f/2.8, 1 second, ISO12,800
Full story on a previous single image
Photographing in a former prison - De Koepel (the Dome) in Haarlem, the Netherlands. I was particularly interested in the way people were moving within the lines of the recreation / sports area, looking down from a high point.
Golden Gate Bridge - San Francisco
Sun flare shooting through the gap of the North Tower.
The photographers and people in the lower left give a sense of scale.
I usually try to line up the moon and Wisconsin's capitol from across Lake Mendota or Monona but a few weeks ago I decided to change it up a bit. I walked to the top of a parking garage near State St and hoped that my calculations for alignment would pan out. They did and I couldn't be happier. The hardest part was finding a proper exposure to balance out the light of the rapidly brightening moon and the dome of the capitol. I've found that the best time to shoot is just after sunset when there is still an ambient glow from the setting sun, helping to balance the two subjects.
One interesting thing about this period (autumn) is that the moon is no longer setting in the west like during the month of June, no, our satellite sets exactly halfway between south and west.
On 28.10.14 this halfway was pretty much mathematically perfect, the moon (phase 36%) was setting south-west shortly after dusk, allowing to observe its slow passage behind the north face of Monviso (3.842 m) exactly during the sunset time.
Here you can see the dorsal of the mountain slightly exposed to the west that takes fire at sunset. As happened during my first visit the previous week, again a crystal clear sky allowed the slanting rays of the setting sun to express themselves in full power, without blocks, deviations or attenuations, that the presence of clouds could generate.
Within a few hours the moon will fall behind the horizon, right between Punta Roma and Punta Udine, allowing the night to get really dark.
This photo, observed at the original high-resolution, allows to see clearly both the crosses on the summit of Monviso and on its secondary peak: the Viso di Vallanta (it's the most geometrically marked part of the ridge, right under the moon) for its form also known as Dado di Viso... in italian "dado" means nut/dice.
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©Roberto Bertero, All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
This one has grown on me since uploading the other version. Camera rotation long exposure light art.
I was up at 4:30 a.m. but did not really go out to the backyard until well after 5:00 (it was 56'ish degrees and windy!). And although I saw that it was overcast, I set up the camera on a tripod anyway, hoping that the sky might clear up before the sunrise "erases" any visible trace of the alignment of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury. But it was not to be. Oh, well...there's still tomorrow.
GH2 + 14-42 II
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An incredible display of light as the sun rises beyond Bryce Canyon's "Silent City" during monsoon season.
© Michael Greene’s Wild Moments 2010 | All Rights Reserved | Please do not use without my permission. Please Note: My images are posted here for viewing enjoyment only. Please contact me if you are interested in using this image or purchasing a print.
Website: www.wildmoments.net
London
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After a string of 4 clear nights in late March, it's been a long time since we have had a stretch of clear moonless nights. So no astrophotography for me…
In the meantime, I had upgraded one of my astro cameras to a new camera known as the ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro. This is a mono camera based on a new generation of larger APS-C size sensors. It offers much higher resolution, a full 16-bits of dynamic range, outstanding noise characteristics, and a much deeper well capacity (which means I can overexpose bright areas of the image - stars - much more before I saturate the sensor). This was also a bigger and heavier camera and I needed to rework my rig to balance things out. I have been eager to test this out.
Recently I had that chance. Choosing Messier 63 - the Sunflower Galaxy as my target I took over 15 hours of exposures through Luminesce, Red, Green, Blue and Hydrogen-Alpha filters over the nights of May 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th. I thought I had clear nights but it turns out that thin clouds passed through on EVERY night - enough cloud to mess-up my exposures but not enough to shut things down. I inspected every single frame and I ended up throwing out 5 HOURS of data due to "Cloud Pollution". I got to tell you - that HURTS.
So about our Target…
I have captured M63 before and I wanted to see what difference I could make with a new camera and a bit more experience under my belt. I am very pleased with the result of my first effort with this camera. Good detail, excellent color.
Located 29.3 Million Light Years away, this is what Wikipedia has to say about M63:
Messier 63 or M63, also known as NGC 5055 or the seldom-used Sunflower Galaxy,[6] is a spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici with approximately 400 billion stars.[7] M63 was first discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain, then later verified by his colleague Charles Messier on June 14, 1779.[6] The galaxy became listed as object 63 in the Messier Catalogue. In the mid-19th century, Anglo-Irish astronomer Lord Rosse identified spiral structures within the galaxy, making this one of the first galaxies in which such structure was identified.[8]
The shape or morphology of this galaxy has a classification of SAbc,[5] indicating a spiral form with no central bar feature (SA) and moderate to loosely wound arms (bc). There is a general lack of large-scale continuous spiral structure in visible light, so it is considered a flocculent galaxy. However, when observed in the near infrared, a symmetric, two-arm structure is seen. Each arm wraps 150° around the galaxy and extends out to 13,000 light-years (4,000 parsecs) from the nucleus.[9]
M63 is a weakly active galaxy with a LINER nucleus – short for 'low-ionization nuclear emission-line region'. This displays as an unresolved source at the galactic nucleus that is cloaked in a diffuse emission. The latter is extended along a position angle of 110° relative to the north celestial pole, and both soft X-rays and hydrogen (H-alpha) emission can be observed coming from along nearly the same direction.[10] The existence of a super massive black hole (SMBH) at the nucleus is uncertain; if it does exist, then the mass is estimated as (8.5±1.9)×108 M☉,[11] or around 850 million times the mass of the Sun.
Here is the detail around this image:
*Number of frames is after bad or questionable frames were culled.
71 x 90 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II L Filter
81 x 90 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, 0 gain, ZWO Gen II R Filter
67 x 90 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II G Filter
79 x 90 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II B Filter
27 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, Astronomiks 6nm Ha Filter
Total of 9.7 hours
25 Darks at 300 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 0
50 Darks at 90 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 0
30 Dark Flats at Flat exposure times, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 0
30 R Flats
30 G Flats
30 B Flats
30 L Flats
30 Ha Flats
Capture Hardware:
Scope: Astrophysics 130mm Starfire F/8.35 APO refractor
Guide Scope: Televue 76mm Doublet
Camera: ZWO AS2600mm-pro with ZWO 7x36 Filter wheel with ZWO LRGB filter set,
and Astronomiks 6nm Narrowband filter set
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60
Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera
Software:
Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..
6608 (ES44C4) and 7424 (ES44DC) assist on the rear of a westbound BNSF bulk train.
The train is seen here traversing the deep cuttings of the straighter 2011 alignment. The winding 1868 alignment can be seen to the right.
Abo Canyon, Scholle, NM.
Tuesday, 29 October 2024.
The Carnac stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites around the village of Carnac in Brittany, consisting of alignments, dolmens, tumuli and single menhirs. More than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany, and form the largest such collection in the world. Most of the stones are within the Breton village of Carnac, but some to the east are within La Trinité-sur-Mer. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BCE, but some may date to as early as 4500 BCE.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac_stones
Les alignements de Carnac sont situés sur la commune de Carnac dans le département du Morbihan en Bretagne. Il s'agit d'un site d'alignements mégalithiques exceptionnel (la région de Carnac réunissant la plus forte concentration de mégalithes du monde1) constitué d'alignements de menhirs, de dolmens et d'allées couvertes et réparti sur plus de quatre kilomètres. Les alignements de Carnac sont les ensembles mégalithiques les plus célèbres et les plus impressionnants de cette période avec près de 4 000 pierres levées vers 4500 ans avant notre ère.
If you zoom in twice, you can see that Mars is right between M20, the Triffid Nebula, and M8, the Lagoon Nebula. If I'd known this, I would have switched to my telephoto lens and got a close-up, like I did with Saturn and the two nebula.
A high exaggeration of a simple astro comp I shot near Windy, NSW two years ago. I found time to tinker it around and finally post it, especially when the milky way is not so shy these days.
With the 2012/2013 Aurora season coming to a disappointing close, who knows what the 2013/2014 season will hold! So many elements have to align for such an awesome sight to be seen from the west of Ireland. In fact this panorama taken in March 2012 may have been a once in a lifetime event. Delighted to have witnessed it from the comfort of my own home, priceless!
Aurora Borealis, Crescent Moon, Pladies, and Venus casting reflections on the North Atlantic as seen from Co. Mayo, Ireland
Pentax K-x, 30 sec, ƒ/3.5, ISO 1600 @ 18 mm
Click here to see my astro set www.flickr.com/photos/55738210@N05/sets/72157632471819250/
This structure sits close to the town of Port Glasgow on the river Clyde. This is a small section of what could almost be called a field of wooden posts. Originally constructed to hold wooden logs for use in the ship building industry which once formed the heart of the work force in the area, they now lie dormant and act as a memory of a long gone industry.