Project Update

From last night, I managed to get the files converted, loaded up and feed through the freeware program called startrails. It took a couple attempts to get something decent, a larger image my PC choked on a bit so I scaled it back since this was an experiment. Well, on my PC the smaller file looked pretty good, so I uploaded it up to youtube and got this:

Don’t look like youtube’s processing was kind to this experiment. I will have to see if I can remake the timelapse, or find a place where I can host better quality images.

Project In Progress

Well, I started a project, its more like an experiment right now, and it is something I tried a while back. It involves taking a ton of photos, a huge amount of time, mostly just sitting around, that is until I run into a snag moving the multi-gig folder with HUNDREDS of raw photos.

It has been so long since I have used my laptop, I forgot it only had a CD burner in it, so that failed. I did manage to do a rough process of the files but it took nearly two and a half hours!  Then I found a problem. I processed the files wrong and needed to re do them, but the bright side is, the processing did shrink the file sizes down and I was able to get them off my laptop, which is having some issues.

It took me around 4 hours to aquire the images, then nearly that long getting them where I wanted them. I did have fun aquiring the images, I had some major headaches. Time to find a thumb drive, or better yet, some 30′ of USB repeaters and hope I can control the camera from inside the house. Oh, a new 8 or 16gig compact flash card. I opted to just dump the images to the laptop since I knew the amount of images I was going to shoot would eat up the card, I ended up with almost 5gig of raw files during the 4 hour time frame I was shooting.

I used a program called startrails to give me a quick and dirty movie, but ran into another problem… the program choked on the 700+ jpg files I was feeding it, so I had to break things up in two. What A work out. One file is on youtube waiting to be processed. Hope it looks better then the last time I saw it. Windows movie maker did a horrid job mixing the two files files together. Looks like if I am going to be doing this time lapse stuff, I will need something better then the freeware I have been using. Hope the the videos (parts 1 and 2) don’t look too bad.

Odd Clouds Over the Rockies

On the evening of November 18th, I was walking back from lunch and noticed something odd in the twilight.  I looked up and noticed what looked to be noctilucent clouds, keep in mind I have never seen these types of clouds before in person, only in photographs. I ran back inside work and grabbed my camera and told my boss I would be back in a few.

A couple questions popped up in my head as I was taking the photos, one is, was it too early for these clouds to be showing up time wise, since they showed up right around twilight. And two, the “noctilucent clouds” looked to be in the wrong place. I shot away anyway thinking some one would have an answer and I did plan on submitting my sighting to spaceweather.com

Noctilucent clouds, over Denver!?

Well, I sent the image off to spaceweather and waited to see if they would put it up. Well, they did, but not featured, but at least I was mentioned and got a link to my photo. Turns out, I was not the only one that seen this, but most other entries where from the morning. Hmm. Space weather said this was a mystery cloud and reports where coming in from Utah and Colorado. Here are a couple links of interest on spaceweather:

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=18&month=11&year=2009

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=19&month=11&year=2009

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=20&month=11&year=2009

Asteroid debris, pretty cool!

Winter Storm Round II

We are gearing up for another winter storm here in Denver. We got a little bit of snow this afternoon, around 330pm then it stopped a bit later, around 8 when I got off work, the snow had returned, heavy and wet and really coming down. Roads are very slick and we did not see any plows on the way home. We slid around a half dozen times and seen a few other people do the same. The warning is until 5pm Sunday. Should be interesting

Rings Around the Sun – A Corona

Formed the same way cloud iridescence is formed, by diffraction. A corona is hard to get due to the closeness to the sun, I found these more of a challange then getting a 22 degree halo. I would not had noticed if it was not for 2 things, 1, I was looking up, looking at the clouds and two, I was looking through the window of my car which are are tinted slightly. Getting the shot, well, I probably could have used a longer lens, but my 11-16mm was primed and ready to go. I usualy shoot manual but since I did not know how long this was going to last, I gave in, set the camera to AV and went for it.

Corona around the Sun

A Corona another shot

More information on atmospheric optics such as corona like this can be found in my links collection.

My Sky At Night

This is suppost to be an astronomy and photography related board, so where is the astro stuff? Its not really here. A while back I even joined a club for astronomy and even have access to darker skies then my back yard. The problem is weather and my work schedule. When its clear, I usualy work, or the moon is up. On my nights off, its usualy cloudy or I am wore out from the work week. Every so often, like ever few months, things will line up, no work, no moon, no clouds, but the one issue that remains is light pollution and while I can see more with the help of a camera and software, the light pollution eats the image anyway.

 

 

Lenticular Clouds

Well, what do we have here? An Alien mother ship? No, these are clouds, albeit a bit on the unusual side. These are lenticular clouds, also known as ”Plate clouds” or Altocumulus Lenticularis if you want to be technical. They are usually smooth and take on a lens shape. I have seen these a few times but rarely had my camera. My view point kind was kind of bad, but at least I had a camera in hand this time. They stayed in the same place for a long time, while we did our shopping on the East side of the mountains.

Altocumulus Lenticularis - NOT a UFO

 

Lenticular Cloud

 

Playing with Water and Color

It was cloudy most of the day today so I decided to do some experimental stuff with food color and water. Something that I have been wanting to do for a while. My first couple attempts did not work out at all. I poured some water on a piece of glass and then added a blue food color to it. Well, the food color was very dark and to top it off, my background was a black foamcore board. Underexposure bigtime, but I did get things dialed in and got a decent shot, but not what I was looking for. It was time for plan “B” I got a paper bowl, filled it with water, had my sister help me by dripping food color into the bowl.

3…2….1….click!

Red food color in water

The red food color worked much better. The very first shot we missed on, the drop hit right below frame, but I managed to get another shot as the food color spread out. I got several more shots but they did not turn out quite as good. Tried the blue again and it was pretty much the same story, too dark. Focus was a bit of a pain, had to pre focus and cross my fingers. All in all, a fun experiment. Below is a monochrome conversion.

Fluid Dynamics in monochrome

Anticrepuscular Rays

Another image I shot halloween night. Its got a few things going on in it. One, this is taken at sunset. The sun had already sunk below the horizon and was producing a very pretty sunset (see previous post).  On a whim, I decided to point my camera East and take a photo. The moon was rising, was just above the Belt of Venus, the pink band sitting on the darker band on the horizon. The darker band on the horizon is actually a shadow, Earths. What I did not notice at the time I took the shot was the anticrepuscular rays. I did not take notice of them until I loaded the photo up on the cameras LCD.

Anticrepuscular Rays, Earths Shadow, Belt of Venus & moon

Halloween Sunset

Skies where pretty clear all day, I figured it would be a bust but I took may camera to work with me anyway. Around 6pm, I stuck my head out side and seen the start of what would be a fanstastic sunset. Featuring some Altocumulus clouds, the coloring started out faint but minute by minute, the colors and intensity started to peak. What a sunset!

Trick or treat! Click for larger view