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.

Tri-color Moon

On October 8, much of the Earth was treated to a total lunar eclipse. I have photographed many lunar eclipses, and usually the pictures are nothing to write home about -- just the Moon, colorized. This time however, I noticed something I'd never seen before.  As you probably know, a lunar eclipse gets its reddish glow from every sunset on Earth simultaneously glowing around the rim of the eclipsing planet. But in this photo, between the edge of the Earth's shadow on the right and the characteristic red color on the left are two more colors: bluish-white and yellow. (I boosted the color saturation a bit so you can see it better.)

My first thought was, "Cool! A tri-color Moon." My second thought was, "Wait a minute, I've seen that same color sequence before -- from space!" In my Fifteen Sunsets Per Day blog posting, I show how the color of light changes as the Sun appears to descend through the layers of atmosphere, as seen from the International Space Station. First it's bluish-white, then yellow, then red. Here, I've tipped the blog entry's sequence sideways so you can match it to the colors on the eclipsed Moon photo beneath it:






I imagine that an astronaut standing on the Moon and looking toward Earth during the eclipse would observe the sunset colors change something like the ISS inhabitants can see fifteen times per day -- albeit much more slowly.

But wait, there's more! Off to the lower left was a bonus view: the planet Uranus, which would normally be lost in the glare of the Moon without a handy eclipse to "dimmify" the closer object:



All in all, it was definitely worth getting up at 3:00 AM to see and photograph these cool celestial sights.

Living on the Edge

On a recent trip to Jackson, Wyoming, we were treated to a very dark sky thanks to low light pollution and lack of moonlight. It's awe-inspiring to see so many more points of light than are visible from my backyard in a Portland, Oregon suburb. Of course, the brightest collection of stars we can see in a dark sky is the Milky Way, captured above with a series of 15-second photos at f/3.5 and ISO 6400. (Bonus: If you click on the image and zoom in a bit, you can see the Andromeda Galaxy in the upper-left.)

This view of the Milky Way stretches from horizon to horizon, and yet we still can't see the whole thing. To understand why, it helps to visualize of our position inside the Milky Way; we are "living on the edge" -- well, about 1/5 of the way from the edge of our disk-shaped galaxy.



(Image Source: http://stevekluge.com/geoscience/images/milkywaysun.jpg)

No matter where we look in the sky, the Milky Way is there. That famous archway in the sky glows brighter because the bulk of the galaxy's stars are toward its center. But essentially, every star we can see as a single point of light is still part of the Milky Way -- even if it's in the opposite direction from the galactic center.

How could we arrange to see the whole thing, when it's all around us? You are already familiar with stitched panoramas. My Milky Way photo from Wyoming is a 17-shot stitched composite that crosses the whole sky. Let's tip it sideways and see how it fits into the galactic context:



As you can see, it's only big enough to show part of the Milky Way.

To see all of our galaxy, I would need to take my camera to dark-sky locations on earth representing both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, then combine all the photos -- about 300 of them -- to cover all portions of the earth's visible sky. And, to get a high-quality result, I'd need to stack 4 photos for each of the 300, for a total of 1,200 shots. The exposures would need to be about six minutes each, to gather enough light for a low-noise, high-resolution digital camera sensor. Last but not least, six minutes would ordinarily show star trails instead of stars. (The longest exposure you can do with a fixed camera at the necessary zoom level is about 15 seconds.) So, the camera would need to be placed on an equatorial mount with a clock drive to track the motion of the stars through the sky.

It would be a huge project, taking well over a year.

Fortunately, I don't need to embark on such an ambitious adventure; Serge Brunier has already accomplished the project. His result looks like this:



(Image source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html)

Brunier's website includes a dynamic 360-degree view showing what it would look like if you were floating in space looking at the Milky Way. Using the keyboard arrow keys, you can look to the left, right, up, and down. In essence, Brunier packaged his amazing spherical composite in a 3D viewer.  You can spin around and look behind, where it is clear that the Milky Way actually looks like a surrounding ring -- the stars between us and the galaxy's edge are still concentrated in a band, since they are part of the overall disk.

We are indeed living on the edge -- but still inside -- of the Milky Way.

I'll close this blog entry now, because once you go to Brunier's dynamic 360-degree view, you'll not want to come back. (Yes, it's that cool.)