The Solar Eclipse Most People Missed

On August 21, 2017, the Moon’s shadow swept a long narrow swath across North America. The people fully inside that track looked up and saw an unforgettable sight -- a pitch black lunar disk with the Sun’s beautiful corona delicately blazing off into space. 

Everyone outside that track missed it. Normally, when we miss some big event, we can depend on a myriad of cameras being used by others to capture the sight and then show us a replay. But for a solar eclipse, none of those photos and videos properly convey what we see in person. Fortunately, the photo above comes closer than the usual fare thanks to some new photographic tools available.

In a way, the image was 38 years in the making. When I viewed the 1979 total solar eclipse near Goldendale, Washington, my first impression was that all the eclipse photos I had ever seen lied to me. None of them came anywhere near capturing the stunning beauty and delicacy of the celestial sight. That’s because the range of coronal brightness is just too wide to capture in a single photo, even though I could plainly see the whole thing with my eyes.

Here is my best single-frame shot of the 2017 eclipse.  Along with most of the published photos and videos I have seen, it still suffers from the same problem as my 1979 eclipse photos: inadequate representation of the Sun's corona, which ends up looking like a thin bright shroud around the Moon’s silhouette.  That's not what it looks like in person.

For the 2017 eclipse, I resolved to do better. Armed with my Canon DSLR and a rented 400mm Canon L-series lens, I planned to capture an image that better conveys what we see with our eyes when we gaze up at the eclipsed Sun. During totality, I shot 12 different exposures, ranging from 1/4000 sec to 1/2 sec (ISO 200, f/11).

Readers of this blog can probably predict the next step: HDR to blend multiple exposures into one image. As you may know, HDR processing can be an art form by itself, with many virtual switches and knobs that control the final result. I declined the temptation to show things that could not be easily seen with the naked eye, like earthshine on the Moon's face as seen in several other HDR photos out there. 

My goal was to convey, as much as I could, the incredible grandeur of what I remembered seeing with my own eyes when I gazed upward that summer day in 2017 -- from the inner corona’s structure to the gossamer filaments streaming out from the Sun’s north and south poles. The result is the photo at the top of this blog entry. 

While I was there, I also captured other aspects of the 2017 eclipse, like solar flares, Baily’s Beads, the diamond ring, etc.

It’s all here in my Flickr album. 

There are also a couple of videos on my YouTube channel that you might enjoy:

• Experiencing Totality in the 2017 Solar Eclipse - This is worth watching, if only to hear people’s reaction to the arrival of totality.  A picture-in-picture inset shows what they were seeing at the time.
  
  
• Total Solar Eclipse in 6 Minutes From 6 Cameras - A fun telephoto timelapse of the whole event, followed by the views from 5 different wide-angle cameras -- the last one with a disappearing mountain.

The good news is that there is another total eclipse viewing opportunity coming soon. On April 8, 2024, there will be another North American total solar eclipse. Seeing it in person may involve creative logistics, but I have never heard anyone express regret after seeing a total eclipse, even with travel. In fact, the most frequent comment I’ve heard was some version of, “Wow, I had no idea it would be that beautiful!  When/where is the next one?” 

Only 7 months to go; it's time to start planning your travel arrangements for the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024!

Negative Space

For 21 years, this photo of a beautiful Hawaiian rainbow looked very different:

If you are over 25 (or thereabouts), you will immediately recognize the photo's negative.  Of course, back in the olden days pictures were taken on film that had to be developed and printed.  We would take those 4x6 prints, choose the best ones, then place them in a series of paper photo albums.

By 2005, I was shooting exclusively digital photos, and eventually started sharing those pictures using Flickr.

 

For various reasons, our paper photo albums stalled at the 1998 mark.  This created a family history gap between 1999 and 2005.  For that time period, photos of family, landscapes, flora and fauna, etc. were trapped in neatly labeled envelopes of photographic negatives.  Their associated 4x6 prints were filed in storage boxes, queued up for paper photo albums that would never be made.

To remedy the six-year absence of photos in our accessible family's history, I realized we needed to scan those trapped negatives.  It was a multi-month project, fit in between other important activities.  But now, the six-year history gap has been filled.

FWIW, here are some eclectic photos from the six-year gap that have not really seen the light of day until now.

Eventually, we will use the scanned photos to pick up where we left off on our paper photo albums, but this time using custom-created books like Kathy has done for the more recent digital pictures.

In the meantime, the "gap" images are now available for perusing and sharing, just like our existing collection of digital photos.

Fifteen Million-Trillion Miles Away

The Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest object I have ever photographed in some level of detail. It is 2.3 million light years away, which works out to fifteen million-trillion miles. How can I take a picture of something so far away with only a moderate telephoto lens? Answer: It's big. Monstrously so. Andromeda is twice the diameter of our own galaxy. In our sky, the neighboring galaxy spans the width of four full moons side-by-side.

But it's faint. Andromeda is one of the few galaxies that can be "seen" with binoculars or even the naked eye, but it still only appears as a hard-to-see fuzzy smudge of light. When it comes to faint sky objects like other galaxies, the only way to get a good look at them is through photography -- like the photo above. (While recently visiting friends near Redmond Oregon, I took advantage of their dark-ish sky to shoot the picture through a providential hole in the encroaching cloud cover. Minutes afterward, the view was gone.)

To take a sharp photo of a faint sky object, it is necessary to track the apparent motion of the stars across the sky. Without star tracking, the 30-second galaxy exposure would look like this one where I had turned the tracking clock drive off:



My first attempt at using star tracking for astrophotography was to piggyback the camera on my telescope, which has an equatorial mount designed specifically for tracking celestial objects:



It worked, allowing me to shoot a long-exposure version (thus low image noise, at ISO 100) of Jupiter and its four Galilean moons:



Here it is with the tracking clock drive off:



Unfortunately, the combined weight of the camera and telescope was too much for the mount to hold reliably. The solution was to take the telescope out of the equation, putting the camera directly on the equatorial mount. That amount of weight was easily handled by the mount:



But without something like a telescope to see precisely what the camera is pointing at, it’s impossible to aim accurately toward dim stars or faint-sky objects -- they are not visible in the camera’s viewfinder. To solve this problem, I mounted a red-dot finder scope onto the camera’s hotshoe:



A red-dot finder puts an apparent illuminated dot amid the stars showing precisely what the camera is pointing at. In case you haven’t seen one of these cool scopes, here is what it looks like through the glass:




*****

Of course, there are vastly better photos of the Andromeda Galaxy on the internet, some even taken with “amateur” equipment -- but much more expensive and sophisticated than mine. My favorite example of that category is physician Robert Gendler, who is world-renowned for his spectacular celestial images.

Will I ever get deep sky astronomy shots like Gendler's? Definitely not. Please allow me to wax philosophically for a bit. My photos may get better over time, but I don’t have the time or resources needed to get really good at astrophotography. It’s mostly a choice of course. With photographic interests all over the map, my decision is to be “Jack of all Trades, Master of None.” You can see this in my blog and Flickr site. It makes me sufficiently happy to know that an astrophotograph like the featured Andromeda image was captured myself, using my own camera.

But I also like the shattering light bulb:



...And the Retractable Landing Gear birds:



...And the Fire Flowers:



...Etc.

I enjoy getting to see these amazing things with my own eyes -- and then sharing them with others if they care.

So, to the handful of people out there following this blog, thanks for going on this scattered photographic journey with me. Perhaps one of you will be inspired by realizing that it does not require thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment to capture an image of something fifteen million-trillion miles away.

Living on the Edge 2

In Living on the Edge, we explored what it means to be living near the rim of the Milky Way galaxy. Short answer: we are gazing out upon the universe with our own galaxy dominating the whole sky -- all 360° of it. This blog entry is an update on the "gazing" part.

Recently we camped at North Twin Lake in Central Oregon. It was a glorious moonless, dark-sky view of the Milky Way over a mirror-smooth lake that reflected stars and even the galactic disk itself.  Here is a photo showing the whole vista as the Milky Way stretched up into the sky.



Of course that tiny rendition -- while it nicely shows the whole view at one glance -- doesn't effectively show how many individual stars are visible on a moonless night in a dark-sky location. Well actually, individual stars that would be visible, if only we had eyes that could see dim pinpoint objects. Granted, we can see many stars with the naked eye, but those are only the relatively bright ones. There are many, many, many more stars that we can't see without help.

Fortunately, we have time-exposure photography (details at the end of the blog entry). Here is a bigger view -- can you count the stars? Let me know when you get to 50 billion; you'll be about halfway there. Notice that the neighboring Andromeda galaxy is visible in the upper-left -- it has a trillion stars to tally.



If we could actually see the Milky Way this well every time we went outside at night -- like we can clearly see the Moon without photographic aids -- I wonder how many songs would have been written about the awesome spectacle?

Fly Me to the Milky Way
There's a Milky Way Out Tonight
Allegheny Milky Way
Milky Way Glow
Milky Way Light Becomes You
By the Light of the Silv'ry Milky Way
How High the Milky Way
Milky Way Light Cocktails
Milky Way River

*****

As promised, here are some technical details on the photos above.  They are based on a 40-shot composite covering most of the sky, stitched with Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (ICE).  Each frame was taken at f/3.5 and ISO 6400 for 15 seconds -- just long enough to "see" dim stars yet is sufficiently quick to prevent star trails.  The horizontal crop is 94 megapixels; the top of the photo is the zenith, i.e. directly overhead.  In the 70-megapixel vertical crop, the top of the photo is the other end of the sky, i.e. horizon to horizon (minus the trees, which would have shown as upside-down).  Of course, both photos are downsized for the blog post; let me know if you'd like a full-resolution copy.

*****

We had great fun on that trip to North Twin Lake.  During the day, we watched our grandkids and dog swimming joyfully in the crystal clear water of the volcanic crater. The fun did not end at sunset -- evening started with a beautiful crossing of the super-bright International Space Station overhead.  We even got our campsite neighbors and their kids excited about that event: "There are seven people up there!"  (Actually there were only six; I looked it up later.)  Then more stars came out, with an occasional meteoric remnant from the Perseids.  But for me, the main show that night was seeing the Milky Way spreading out its splendor above the mirror-smooth water.

*****

Update, January 20, 2016: In Living on the Edge, I said: "Let's tip [the photo] sideways and see how it fits into the galactic context."  Inwardly, I had been a little disappointed about how little of the galaxy's center bulge showed before being interrupted by the pesky horizon.

The North Twin lake photo shows more of the Milky Way than did the earlier Jackson, Wyoming photo.  So, I repeated the exercise of tipping the photo sideways then fitting it into the galactic context. Here is the result, with the Jackson version shown first for comparison. 



That bright spot is actually the galactic core.  So, as we were standing on the shore of North Twin Lake, we were gazing out upon the very center of our galaxy -- along with its reflection in the smooth water.  Cool, huh?

Planetary Conjunctions Aplenty

This year we have been treated to several conjunctions -- times of picturesque planetary sharing in the same section of sky. This photo shows a young Crescent Moon cozying up to Venus, which has been dominating the twilight western sky recently.

Here is a closer view of the pair, where some of the Moon's craters are visible. Also, one can see that the bright dot for Venus is slightly elongated, showing that it, too, is a crescent. (For more information on that phenomenon, see the Pre-Dawn Crescents blog entry.)



Around June 30, Venus and Jupiter had a very close encounter, being only 0.3° apart in the sky. One science writer explained the visual proximity by pointing out that one could hide both of them with a chopstick held at arm's length. (He was right; I tried it.) The house across the street from us provided a nice perspective of how very close the planets were in the sky.



And not just the planets themselves. One of the most rewarding aspects of photographing a close-proximity Jupiter/Venus conjunction is getting a picture showing 6 planetary bodies in the same shot: the two planets plus four of Jupiter's moons:



Here is a Venus-Mars-Uranus-Moon conjunction forming a nice triangle, although it's harder to see Uranus because the planet is rather dim from its vast distance well beyond the orbit of Saturn.



(Funny story: I didn't realize I was including Uranus in this shot until I later examined a sky chart for that day. When I pulled the photo file from my archives, sure enough -- there was Uranus, right where it was supposed to be.)



Have you ever wondered why there are so many planetary conjunctions? After all, there are only 8 major planets, and the sky is very big. How can there be so many visually-close encounters between the planets? The answer is the Ecliptic. When we look up into the night sky, there is an imaginary line called the Ecliptic, made visible below as a dashed line in the Star Walk app's view of the Venus-Mars-Uranus-Moon conjunction photo:



The planets and our Moon always tend to cluster near that line, thus providing plenty of opportunities for close encounters. The ancients could not figure out why this was the case; however they knew that for an eclipse to happen, the moon would have to be crossing the line -- hence the name, "Ecliptic." What is that magical line? It's really nothing more than the orbital plane of the solar system seen edge-wise.


Source page: http://education.nationalgeographic.com/media/orbital-plane/
Image file: http://media.education.nationalgeographic.com/assets/photos/000/285/28546.jpg

We never get to see this oblique viewing angle ourselves, because we are stuck inside that virtual disk. So, as we gaze out at the other planets and the Sun, they are all essentially along a line -- the Ecliptic.

Of course, if every planetary orbit was on exactly the same plane, we would always see them perfectly aligned, like this:




Source page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic
Image file #1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic#/media/File:Ecliptic_plane_side_view.gif
Image file #2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic#/media/File:Ecliptic_plane_top_view.gif

Instead, we see the planets above and below that line at different times since their orbits around the Sun are all inclined slightly differently than ours. Here is a view from a star chart program that shows it well. The green line is Earth's orbit; observe how the other planets' orbits are not quite aligned with ours.


Source page: https://infinitewell.wordpress.com/tag/planetary-alignment/
Image file: https://infinitewell.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/orbital-plane-1.jpg

That allows for lovely patterns like this triangle of Venus, the Crescent Moon, and Mercury from the Tax Day Conjunction blog post:



Here is where the Ecliptic was on that evening:



So, there you have it; planetary movement in a nutshell. (Well, more like "...on a dinner plate.") Pardon me if you already knew everything about the Ecliptic and Solar System's orbital plane. But I often say, "Wow; I learn something new every day." For some of you, perhaps this was your day to have the planets' motions in the sky suddenly make more sense.

If you like these conjunction photos, I posted some more on Flickr (slideshow).

Retractable Landing Gear 2

In my Retractable Landing Gear blog posting, we examined what large birds do with their feet after taking off.  The short answer was that they tuck their feet and legs closely under their bodies, making an aerodynamically smooth surface -- much like an airplane's landing gear folding inward.  But as you can see from the photo above, there are also other uses for those feet during flight.  This osprey at the Outer Banks in North Carolina last May was on his way home bringing a very fresh fish for dinner (still wriggling), gripped securely in his un-retracted talons.

Sometimes a bird's legs are simply too long to tuck completely underneath.  This blue heron near the Ballard Locks in Seattle showed that situation last April:







Of course, landing gear is also useful for, well, landing. At the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden a number of years ago, this duck demonstrated a water landing for me by first flaring his wings, then using his webbed feet as water skis:





But my favorite demonstration of avian landing gear in action was this Bald Eagle in the Tetons near Jackson Hole in September:







The eagle's strong, sharp talons turned a dead tree root into a nice perch from which to survey his domain.