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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I'm going to be in the middle of nowhere in the UP for the perseid meteor shower in about the darkest place I could find, hope the smoke from canada isnt too bad :/ Where in the UP you going to be? I've got a list of four spots to drive to (from Chicago) depending on the HRRR smoke forecast on the 9th. Au Sable lighthouse is one of those spots. Just curious if there's some kickass foregrounds that away that I don't know of yet (which I'm sure there are, I've only been up there once). I got this plan to do two nights worth of meteors composited together with a cool terrestrial silhouette and it's been a tough search. BWCA or Nebraska sand hills are two other options. If the forecast looks super grim I'll just be pissed off and head to a class 2 spot in SW Wisconsin with nasty city glow, at least then I can be mad and only have to drive three hours.
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Aug 7, 2021 03:20
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First time I set up my tracker in a class 1 area it took an extra 20 minutes to find Polaris in the polar scope because there were enough stars showing up that kinda sorta looked like Polaris in the same area and I didn't really know how to positively ID the right star. My setups closer to home in class 3/4 are way faster because it's the only star visible for a long time after sunset. Getting the chance to see darker than you ever have before is a massive treat.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:36
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Or that even if we did manage to hack physics and develop faster than light travel, it would still only bring our own galaxy into play as a travel target (and then, just a portion unless we could go multiple times the speed of light). I don't know what percentage of the universe the milky way is but it's gonna be 99.9% with a bunch more nines added. I guess the wormhole fans might drop a 'well actually' but that seems just as unlikely to me. There is so much out there that we can see an old version of but will be forever unreachable.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:41
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Do it when you're young because I can't see them anymore and I'm in my mid 40's. I don't even bother to protect my night vision anymore, at least when I'm alone. I see no more stars after 30 minutes of pure dark than I do 30 seconds after turning off the lamp.
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Jan 1, 2022 01:10
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I kinda prefer being in sight of a road when I'm that remote and solo. The imagination kinda takes over when I get deep into the night and having people go by sometimes kinda helps. I like staying as close to the car as possible for the same reason.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:37
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All I think about in terms of aperture is that each stop towards a smaller number doubles the amount of light that passes through. Each stop towards a bigger number halves the light. There’s also depth of field to consider but that’s irrelevant for astro photography. Or diffraction, which also doesn’t matter for astro because it only comes into play at apertures smaller than f/16. Doing astro? Biggest aperture possible!
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Mar 22, 2022 00:03
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Yeah, sorry. I'm a photo guy first and an astro guy second and I saw posts talking about cameras so I'm talking from that world. Life gets fun when two hobbies collide that use the same word to describe different design features. I don't think of ratios at all. I only worry about field of view and depth of field (and time and ISO). 
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Mar 23, 2022 00:00
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What camera and what settings made that frame? I don't know that it has a specific name but "sensor banding" I what I call it and gives lots of hits in google if you want to read about it.
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Mar 24, 2022 04:34
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Canon is notorious for banding. I think only their newest bodies have started to mitigate it.
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Mar 24, 2022 15:23
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Everyone in here probably already knows, but just as a reminder there's a lunar eclipse next Sunday, everything in the US east of the Mississippi can view the full event. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2022-may-16
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May 8, 2022 16:26
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I had a plan to do a relative brightness (keep the same exposure from start to finish) time lapse as it went across the sky but it was overcast last night.  Next time. It cleared up about halfway through but I had already given up and left the camera in the house.
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May 16, 2022 13:11
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Golden-i posted:I did have a camera on a fixed tripod shooting a time lapse as well, but I've never done that before. I'll have to sort through the data when I get a chance but I'm almost positive that it didn't turn out. As long as you didn't move the camera it should assemble pretty well. I made that mistake at the last one a few years ago, figuring it would be easy to stitch a time lapse panorama together. It wasn't! Of course doing it right doesn't mean you end up with a beautiful photo, but that's how art works.
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May 16, 2022 15:48
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Anyone got any hot news about the potential meteor storm tonight? All the reports I'm seeing are still in the "maybe" phase with a handful of recorded meteors over Spain where it's already dark, they got a peak brightness of -3. The current estimated peak seems to be about 1am EST so there's a lot of time left so I guess I'm curious at what point we'll start hearing whether it's a bust or not. (radiant is in Bootes, NW of Arcturus) I got clear skies most the night so I'm charging all my junk and prepping to head out.
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May 30, 2022 21:10
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It's been a nice evening out, clear skies and enough of a wind to keep bugs away but we got the wrong side of the coin flip with this forecast. Bortle 4 here, saw a handful of faint streaks so can't be too mad.
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May 31, 2022 06:31
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Someday I'll get to see a meteor storm, today was not it. I took about 390 exposures in an 1:40, this was everything I could get at 24mm on a full frame camera. There were a couple other dim ones or pinpoints that I didn't feel like including. I saw a handful more outside the camera frame, there were a couple nice bright ones that went through the big dipper. At least you can clearly see where the radiant is I guess?  I did get to sit outside and stare at stars and wonder how much is out there so still a good night. (the brightest star in the middle is Arcturus)
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May 31, 2022 17:02
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I really wanted the track to go all the way out of frame, but clouds developing on the horizon and dawn interfered (that's why the last two are so blurry, I kinda wanted to omit them but it threw everything off balance). Maybe next time. lunar eclipse over the wilson hall by Seth Graham, on Flickr A lot of composites like this are bullshit so my goal was to make it as authentic as possible. Tried to keep the same exposure for the entire night to really get a feel for how dark the moon gets. I did have to bump the ISO at maximum because it got a lot darker than I expected, but I adjusted those downwards in editing to get things back in line (I would have been fine not changing anything).
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Nov 8, 2022 19:20
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Anyone got any comet experience to talk about? There's that new one, C2022 E3, that is passing by for the next few weeks. I understand there's still a lot of unknowns about it so I'm curious about generalities. It will be at its brightest (maybe not to us on earth) when closest to the sun correct? So how does one estimate observing quality as it nears earth? Basically I'm trying to get an idea for the best nights to go try and capture a shot between now and the first week of February since I don't have the luxury of getting to dark skies every night (3-4 hours from bortle 2).
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Jan 15, 2023 01:19
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Been freezing my rear end off all night and I can't find the drat thing because of the moon. So I look around for 20 minutes, get mad at my bad eyes, and huddle under the sleeping bag for a while until I feel like trying again. At least I found a great dark sky site three hours from home. Skies opposite the moon look fantastic so I'll definitely be coming back here. Even has a good cell signal.
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Feb 2, 2023 11:56
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AstroZamboni posted:When the first 2 comets you observe after getting into amateur astronomy are Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp, fifth magnitude farts aren't particularly novel or fussworthy. The media coverage really oversold the event. They billed it as the best comet EVER because no one's seen it since the neanderthals and always included epic photos showing a really long tail creating the impression it's another neowise. I'm not super mad, it still got me outside staring at the stars, but it was certainly a dud of a comet watching night.
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Feb 3, 2023 20:08
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Hale-Bopp was during my "I'm too old for kid awe and too young to be a functioning adult" years so I skipped it entirely. I was not smart at 20. Trying to make up for it now, just need the galaxy to send us more stuff.
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Feb 4, 2023 02:38
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We just moved to the Denver area and there is bortle 1 about three hours away. When we were in Chicago I'd have to drive ten hours for that. And in the summer when the mountains are navigable there's even more options as long as I don't mind some mountains blocking the horizon. Even the darkest parts of Utah are in range now. It's nice to be spoiled for choice finally, took a lot of waiting to get here. (assuming forest fire haze cooperates)
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Feb 4, 2023 06:55
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This ain't the thread for it but I'll complain anyways: land access in Colorado is a confusing mess. I figured out SWA's and state parks but access to state trust lands are incomprehensible to me and it looks like river access is 100% in favor of private owners. At least there's lots of national forest and BLM options in the mountains, those I understand. I'm fine paying for a license, just make it easy you goofs. I did find a thread on cloudynights listing a bunch of good sites and I'll definitely be working through that list once the snows melt.
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Feb 4, 2023 23:06
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Would an ASIAIR kit (along with a guide scope) be relatively future proof? Right now I only have a skyguider pro and I've been pretty happy with it for what I've been doing (wide angle with camera lenses). But my tastes are expanding now that I have better access to dark sites and I wanna play with galaxies and nebula. My eyes are getting horrible at night and polar alignment takes more and more time, and that doesn't even get into finding stuff I want to shoot. My concern is if in two years I want to splurge on a fancy go-to mount this stuff becomes completely worthless or if whatever I buy will always benefit from it. (this is photography only, due to aforementioned bad eyes observing is basically not gonna happen)
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Feb 20, 2023 21:22
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Landscape photography was my gateway about 7 years ago. Eventually one is gonna hit a point where they want to incorporate the milky way or an aurora or an eclipse into a scene and from there it's game over, you're trapped in the rabbit hole. It was capturing meteor showers that triggered getting my first equatorial mount (because aligning all the frames after the fact sucks). My gear is all still super basic but I do have a shopping list as I get funds. It's also soothing to be able to precisely know where something in the sky is going to be and align it with some terrestrial feature without ever visiting the area. Means I can pull up and get the frame without hunting around (a regular problem when taking photos in the day). The national parks that google has high resolution terrain for make this quite fun.. am hoping to be in monument valley for the annular eclipse this October.
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Apr 3, 2023 15:52
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Achmed Jones posted:are there any fairly comprehensive guides on how to do astrophotography? depends, how many tables of camera specs do you consider comprehensive? Because this guy maintains a truly absurd amount of data here: https://clarkvision.com/
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Apr 3, 2023 15:58
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Star Man posted:The path of totality of the 2024 solar eclipse passes over Cleveland and Erie, Pennsylvania, both of which are two hours from Pittsburgh. I have no doubt that it will be cloudy in April. I'm seriously considering going to Texas to see it. Texas has the best percentage of clear skies in the US at that time of year (and it's still not great, like 30% or 40%? It's been a while since I checked), and the percentages get worse and worse as it tracks towards the northeast. Unfortunately finding public lands in Texas is hard. The path misses big bend for example which is probably the biggest public area in the state.. the rest is all ranches. There are a handful of small state parks that are in the right spot but I guarantee they are gonna be PACKED. The alternative is to go down into Mexico (and the skies get better) but there's problems with that too. edit - http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2024_GoogleMapFull.html - just look at that, the options are terrible xzzy fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 24, 2023 |
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Apr 24, 2023 19:50
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Star Man posted:The path of totality went over my hometown in Wyoming. I want to see another one something fierce. Mexico may be the better place to go. I've only been there once in 2000 for a day in Nogales. Good thing I have a passport. Unfortunately all the locations in Mexico have scary warnings from the US government about crime and gang activity. If you stay in curated tourist areas it'll probably be fine but there are some nasty spots to be aware of.
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Apr 24, 2023 21:26
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I'm thinking the national forests in Arkansas or southern Illinois. This track isn't nearly as good for landscape scenery as the 2017 one (unless you roll the dice and do the mountains of Maine) but I'd at least like a shot at not being in a massive crowd. I'm currently eyeing Tall Peak Fire Tower because it's a small hike to get there which maybe means less of a throng. And if the weather is a bust there's some trails nearby to explore. Side note: don't forget there's an annular eclipse in October too. Get that ring of fire! It passes through some excellent remote sites in the southwest US. Also side complaint: how the hell does a state as big as Texas have so little public land? What a hellscape.
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Apr 25, 2023 02:11
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I just saw a starlink conga line streak past for the first time and man, Elon sucks rear end. They were brighter than everything in the Big Dipper.
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Aug 12, 2023 05:00
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I had good luck Saturday night. Except for the part where I fell asleep around 2:30 and my intervalometer shut off for some reason, lost about an hour of shooting time. Oops. perseid meteor shower over the boar's tusk I struggled with processing decisions. I wanted it to look as if I was there, and it was dark as poo poo. I tried to tone down the stars to get closer to the human eye but my slider wiggling skills to get rid of dimmer stars were not up to snuff. I really should have taken some shorter exposures to simply not capture the dimmer stars, but I can't rewind time unfortunately. Obviously this deletes the shape of the milky way too, you can see if it you know it's there but my eyes are at the point where I can barely see it anyways so I guess this makes it more "eye accurate." I'm pretty bad at astro processing though so if anyone's got tips I'd love to hear them.
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Aug 14, 2023 17:56
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Good practice for the eclipse in October. Assuming you’re in that part of NA.
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Aug 27, 2023 02:43
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Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask.. do foil solar filters lose effectiveness over time? I got one that I used in 2017. Viewing glasses too I guess. A quick google says they don't but does that depend on material/quality?
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Aug 27, 2023 04:00
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Stellarium is my go-to for object finding. Photopills for planning events (such as showers and eclipses).
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Sep 8, 2023 22:51
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It's test run day! So far so good. Now to leave it set up for the next three hours.. 
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Oct 8, 2023 22:57
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So the only failure I had was polar alignment. Turns out when you can't see polaris it's really hard and the sun kept drifting out of frame. Anyone got any tips for better alignment during the day? I set up my phone on the mount and use the PS Align app to align with the compass, which I know has limitations but I figured it would be close enough. And I guess it was, at 500mm I only had to reposition about every 20 minutes but if there's an easy way to get more precise I'd love to hear it.
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Oct 9, 2023 16:01
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I'm a little more analog than that, it's just a skyguider pro. But it's fine, if the solution is "have a fancier gear" I can live with manual adjustments every so often this Saturday.
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Oct 9, 2023 16:29
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simble posted:Okay. Same steps, just manually point it using the coordinates you get from the software/the internet (https://heavens-above.com/Sun.aspx). I assume it has setting circles? No, no setting circles. It's a pretty basic kit. But you did provide some keywords I could plug into google about some daytime techniques and they all definitely work. Nothing got me results any more precise than my phone based alignment but I know they can be precise so either my tools or my skills aren't up to snuff.. I only spent an evening at it so I assume it needs more practice. I'm getting to my site on the 13th so I'll have half a day to experiment with no distractions so I'll try them all and figure out what works for me. I might even get up before dawn on the 14th and align to polaris before it fades out.
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Oct 10, 2023 16:32
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Photographically the eclipse was kind of a bust, but I knew that going into it. The sun is still too bright to really do much cool with it. But I did get a good sequence of bailey's beads, being able to see shadows from peaks on a body 250 thousand miles away kinda blows my mind. This animation is pretty close to real time (as close as the animation tool in photoshop would let me get), from C3: https://i.imgur.com/aH1rZtN.mp4 (I got C2 as well, but to me this sequence looks cooler) xzzy fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 17:28
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drat, a goon knew Alyn Wallace? Talk about a legend in the field. Wish I could have met him but it's a big world.
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Apr 2, 2024 01:12
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Obviously it's too late to give advice but if you were at the 97% region you really shoulda made the effort to get to 100%. The experience is completely different.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:18
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