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In Alignment.
The Fire Station on a foggy morning.
Lined up my camera with the flagpole and light casting s long shadow.
A Southern Pacific Brakeman muscles the bridge of the gallows-style, "Armstrong" turntable into perfect alignment as his crew prepares to turn Locomotive #18 in the yard at Laws, California.
This image was made during a March, 2023 photo shoot at the Laws Museum, near Bishop, California, which featured Southern Pacific, Baldwin 10-wheeler #18 on her second visit to the property since the completion of her restoration in 2017.
Not my tidiest work. The Moon was pretty bright and Venus wasn't visible until well into the dawn. I couldn't see Mercury at all, but it's hiding in the sunlight below Venus.
Starry night sky and Milky Way over String Lake and Tetons, Grand Teton National Park. The second mountain to the right of the Milky Way is the Grand Teton. The trees silhouetted in front of the stars are new lodgepole pines mixed with charred pines from a forest fire 30 years ago. Please visit my photostream every Thursday to see a new ''NightScape'' image. Read the Huffington Post story about my NightScape photography.
My new ebook, Milky Way NightScapes, gives extensive details on how to enhance the landscape foreground. Three other chapters cover planning, scouting, forecasting star/landscape alignment, shooting and post processing.
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See the awe-inspiring NightScape VIDEO – with one Milky Way after another!
''NightScape'' series style: If I only wanted to capture the stars against a totally black sky and have no landscape features in the foreground, I'd just attach my camera and lens to an astronomy type tracking motor, and expose as long as I wanted (using low ISOs). However, doing this would blur the landscape features, because camera would be following the stars and the rotation of the earth! My goal in this series is to show the stars in a relationship to an earthly landscape feature, and not just do astrophotography.
In my style of "NightScape" photography, I am trying to capture the stars as points of light, not star trails, so my exposure must be very short -- usually less than 30 seconds. This requires very fast and expensive lenses and extremely high ISOs. (The Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Mark III are some of the best cameras out there for producing a minimum amount of noise at these high ISOs.)
TECHNICAL STUFF
Camera and Lens: This photo was taken with my 15mm full-frame Canon fisheye lens (30 seconds @ f2.8, ISO 6400). This lens gives me almost a 180-degree angle of view. Many of my photos are taken with the Canon 24mm f1.4 lens (84-degree angle view). I would roughly calculate that the full-frame sensor of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II is about 40 times more sensitive to light than a typical point-n-shoot camera, and several times more sensitive than your eye, when coupled with a 15 to 30-second time exposure. Each exposure is 30 seconds or less (any longer than this, then the stars appear to move or streak, due to the rotation of the earth -- producing star trails or arcs, rather than round dots). Please note that most DSLR cameras with a "fast" prime lens can capture my style of NightScapes.
Fast Lenses: The aperture (or "F" stop) is usually set as near to wide open as the lens design will allow, in order to capture as much light as I can during the exposure time. Prime lenses (not zoom lenses), with large apertures (f2.8, f2.0, or f1.4) are preferred for this type of photography, although I've seen some great images with slower, f3.5 lenses.
High ISOs: Most of my star photos are are taken at ISO 3200, 6400, or 8000. With these high ISOs and fast lenses, the camera is able to see detail that your eye and other cameras cannot. Cameras like mine and Nikon's D3 can go even higher (12800, 25600, 51200, and 102400 ISO), but there is always a trade-off in quality. At the moment, I have chosen not to go above 8000, until I can find technology that will obtain the quality I desire. Some DSLR cameras do not go above ISO 1600. I have seen some exposures with these cameras at that ISO, using an f3.5 lens that look great -- the night skies are a little darker than the ones I shoot (eliminating the fainter stars), but the views are still stunning.
Digital Noise: High ISO's and long exposures (anything over 1-second) can produce digital noise -- what film users call "grain" or graininess. Many cameras (especially point-n-shoot cameras) cannot go above ISO 1600 -- and even their 1600 has more noise (digital graininess) than my 6400. Some have been critical of the noise; however, the noise I'm getting at ISO 6400 right now is less than what film gave me at ISO 800, 10 years ago. It is also much less than what I was getting only 6 years ago at ISO 1600 with any digital camera. Technology has come a long way, and I'm very grateful for all the improvements. It allows me to see what my naked eye cannot! Still, anytime I can lower my ISO to 3200 or 1600, I try to do so, in order to reduce noise. This can be done by "stacking" several under-exposures (taken at ISO 1600), and processing them into one photo, with a brighter exposure.
Narrow window of opportunity: The big problem in doing star photography is finding a totally dark and cloudless sky: It must be at least 2 hours after sunset, at least 2 hours before sunrise; and the moon must have set (because it washes out the stars). A New moon or a less than 8% crescent is acceptable. I rely a lot on moon tables from the Farmer's Almanac. As you can tell, there is only a narrow window to shoot these kind of photos, and it only happens a few days each month (when you add the weather factor).
Light pollution: Oh, and did I mention you must be at least 75 miles from the lights of a large town? There are getting to be fewer of these places on the earth. Some of the glow in the sky, right around the tree line, is from the town of Jackson, WY (population of about 9,000), which is about 20 miles away.
Longer focal length lenses require shorter exposure times: With my 180-degree, full frame fisheye lens I can expose as long as 30 seconds and keep the stars as points (unless the image is enlarge over 12 x 18, upon which the stars appear a little elliptical). A 24mm (84-degree angle coverage) requires that I shorten my exposure to 19 seconds or less. A normal 50mm lenses (45-degree angle coverage) requires a 9 seconds or less exposure! This is because the longer focal length lenses are enlarging the area of the sky you see and magnifying the earth's movement -- requiring even shorter exposure times. Some astro-photographers use the "600 rule" for determining the length of their exposure time: dividing 600 by the focal length of the lens (using a full-frame 35mm equivalent). I adjust this to my own "450 rule", which produces less blurring on larger prints. Thus, the maximum exposure time for a 28mm lens would be 16 seconds (450 / 28 = 16).
Lens technical problems: The bigger my lens' aperture, the shorter I can expose my images, and the lower I can set my ISO. One of my favorite large-aperture lenses is the Canon EF 24mm f1.4L II. However, "big" aperture lenses cost a premium, and I've found that unless I stop down at least one aperture stop or more, the coma (spherical aberration) at the edge of my images is terrible -- the starry points of light grow ghostly wings and take the shape of an obtuse triangle. I am constantly fighting a choice between getting more light to the camera's sensor (by opening up the aperture) or whether I should have better quality (less aberrations) near the edges of my images!
Behind the scenes: The NightScape Story
Explore - #330 for Sept 7, 2011 - Thanks everyone! (What is Explore? How do I get Explored?)
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This is the exact "Triple lignment" example with Super Blue Moon 2024.
From this particular Thread & Needle Spot, the Trans-America Pyramid Building Tip can be seen sitting inside the North Tower of Iconic Golden Gate Bridge. According to PlanIt App, there are only 4 times in 10 years that Full Moon cab be appeared to be link with the North Tower of the Bridge. 8/18/2024 was the 1st one in the next 10 years.
We were so lucky to have a clear sky when the supermoon was rising right at sunset. So this image can be taken in one shot with one expose.
Timelapse of this moonrise: youtu.be/XbnnCTpm6cM
We're being treated to a nice show in the night sky right now! From left to right, Mars, the the Galactic Center of the Milky Way, and Jupiter are all in alignment earlier in the night. Pluto and Saturn are in there too, but Pluto is too small to see, and Saturn is to the left and up from the Lagoon Nebula in the Galactic Center. It was dumb luck that I caught this scene, I was vaguely aware of the planetary alignment happening but I've been so busy with projects and preparing for teaching workshops that I had no idea I was going to capture such a beautiful sight until I was out shooting, so needless to say I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to get this composition of Mars and Jupiter flanking the Galactic Center!
Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm lens @ 14mm, f/2.8. The sky is a star stacked blend of 7 shots for low noise and pinpoint stars, stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker for macOS, but you can do this in Sequator for Windows (or other programs but those are the easiest for star stacking landscape astro images). The 7 shots were each at ISO 6400, 10 seconds. The foreground is from a 20 second shot taken less than 2 minutes before I took the exposures for the sky. The tide was going out and on the mudflats it goes out really fast, so the 20 second shot had more water in the foreground on the mudflats, so the reflection of the stars was better, and it was also a sharp reflection since the star stacking was just for the sky, so the star reflections in the water were not aligned with each other and thus blurred in the stacking. I could have done a separate stack for the water in Starry Landscape Stacker to line up the reflections and get low noise, but the 20 second shot had more water and a better reflection. I aligned the foreground star reflections with the reflections of the star stacked image in Photoshop, and masked in the foreground. Noise reduction in Lightroom (before sending the foreground to Photoshop) and Adobe Camera Raw (in Photoshop, which is the same underlying raw editor as Lightroom) was used to reduce the noise on the water.
Visit my website to learn more about my photos and video tutorials: www.adamwoodworth.com
Taken from near the Alameda ferry terminal, I chose this place because from this vantage point, the Bay Bridge seems parallel to the Golden Gate Bridge (the fainter bridge in the background). I liked this picture because the container ship in alignment with the setting sun and the yacht with one of the Bay Bridge towers
CURIOUS ALIGNMENTS (C)
© 2013 Alexandru Crisan
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That time of year when the sun sets perfectly behind Wembley Stadium from my favourite vantage point across Brent Reservoir. One of those sunsets that just kept getting better
Looking up at the sun coming through the trees. Cropped and digitally mirrored so the sun and trees appear to be looking back.
... but very close here. The angle of light, the tree overhanging the scene, and the alignment of the island cone out there in Crater Lake I think all came together nicely here. This one really caught my eye as well as I walked along the rim.
- www.kevin-palmer.com - The two brightest objects in the night sky appear side by side in front of the milky way in a rare alignment. Venus is the blue object, and the yellow object is the moon. Even though the moon was only an 8% crescent, it was brighter than Venus. The band of yellow along the horizon is from the last colors of twilight before it was completely dark. This incredible sky is framed over the Colorado River in Utah. The 2000 foot deep canyon is part of Canyonlands National Park. But this view was actually shot from the edge of a cliff at Dead Horse Point State Park.
To get this shot I combined 2 exposures. The canyon was shot at 8 minutes, f/4, iso 1600. The sky was a 4 minute, f/5.6, iso 1600 exposure. I used an iOptron Skytracker to track the stars for a longer exposure.
Jupiter, Saturn and Venus lining up in the evening sky above the Tihany peninsula (Lake Balaton, Hungary)
White, red, and now yellow and GitD opaque make a nice little team. It would be awesome to find a torso, they're surely out there.
With the Sun having risen in all its glory, an interesting play of light and shadow sets up across the vast, perfectly flat expanse of a flooded Badwater. Before us, the more than two mile high wall of the Panamint Range abruptly rises on the western side from alluvial fans to sheer mountain cliffs coated by recent snow. 11,049 foot tall Telescope Peak takes center stage here glistening in the sun. And a comparatively very short distance behind this photographer the Black Mountains rise even more abruptly more than a mile high. While the Sun has traveled all the way down the face of the Panamints, the vast saltwater lake here remains in shadow from the Black Mountains. As a result the salty water is reflecting nothing but deep blue sky and the salty ridges that stick up remain dark. By chance I found myself presented with an uncanny alignment of a salt ridge that very closely echoes the profile of the Panamint Mountain reflection. The dark, shadowed salty mud traces the contour pretty well, complete with a dip to account for Telescope Peak's tallest reflection.
I don't think these are particularly good shots and I probably wouldn't have posted them except for the fact that I was shocked how well they lined up. Not only the angle but the wheel wells also. I wasn't even trying to do this. Funny how things like this happen. Maybe it says something about our internal levels. Or it's just random.
I have been telling my wife that this particular rock with a single mortar at Vargas Plateau must have been special to the Natives in the past. From here, it aligns with the California oak that I posted yesterday and all the way to Mission Peak. This must have served as an observation post because it has a command view of the Bay.