Although the August 21st eclipse happened about 6 weeks ago, I realized it would take me a long time to edit all the photos I took during my trip. I had over 2000 individual shots of the eclipse alone, taking a single (1/4000 s) shot every 10 seconds, at ISO 100, with my telescope coming out at around f/6. I’ve done a lot of time-lapse photography before, so I thought it would be a routine shot, but I was wrong. Eclipses are much tougher to edit in terms of a time-lapse. But first, the end result of my 10 hours...
Have you ever seen the North star, Polaris? It’s decently bright and very close to the North celestial pole. Lining up with the rotation axis of the Earth, the North celestial pole is the point in the sky that never moves, day or night. If you know how to find Polaris, it becomes easy to find the cardinal directions and navigate by the stars. And finding it simply requires finding the big dipper, a bright and easily recognizable object. The same rules apply in the southern hemisphere. But even though there is no southern star, there is another fantastic object in the South that can guide you to the...
In the midst of cooked turkey and a plethora of sides, I have been reaping the benefits of clear skies and doing my best to learn the skills of astrophotography. I spent a good 6 hours from sunset to just past midnight this past Sunday to see what kinds of shots I could get, and document the latest photos and tricks I’ve learned. I’ll start with my latest time lapse video, since that is what I took first. I started as the sun was about to set, and kept the exposure time very low, along with the ISO. I also...
What is the brightest object in the sky? Why the Sun of course. Second brightest? The Moon. Most people are able to answer this question quite easily, but what is the third brightest? The fourth? Many people will confidently say Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, or Polaris the north star. The answer is that the planet Venus is third and the planet Jupiter is fourth. It shouldn’t be that surprising that planets hold these positions. They are much closer than the distant background of stars, and the human species has been observing them since the dawn of recorded...
That’s right it is not always Polaris. Over a human lifetime Polaris will always be our north star, but in the year 14,000, it will be the bright star Vega. This is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which precesses like a spinning top, albeit much more slowly, over a 32,000 year period.
