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By Andrew, January 19, 2012 10:12 pm

A short night sky time-lapse GIF-a-mation

Last night the power was out for over four hours in West Dover. After I used up the last of the energy in my UPS unit I had to find something else to do with the evening.

Since the power was off in the village the street lights were off as well. This created an interesting opportunity for some excellent wintertime backyard astronomy.

I used a flashlight to locate my camera gear and tripod. Once I had my tripod set up outside I changed the lens on my Canon DSLR camera to an 8mm Peleng circular fisheye lens. The Peleng lens is a lot of fun because it takes extremely wide angle photos. I set my Canon D60 camera to bulb mode and programmed my Canon TC80-N3 intervalometer to capture 90 second long exposures. In all I ran the camera for 45 minutes in the cold weather and captured 28 long exposure images before the batteries died. I think it is cool that the Peleng lens has such a wide field of view that it also caught the headlights of cars driving by on the highway.

This image is a stack of 20 photos @ 90 seconds each.

For the 26 image composite I used the maximum image stacking mode in Photoshop along with dark frame subtraction.

This image is a single 90 second exposure that shows Orion's Belt low on the horizon.

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By Andrew, March 28, 2011 10:25 pm

The free planetarium software Stellarium is very cool and a lot of fun to use. A friend of mine asked me the other day what a sunset time-lapse would look like if it captured the Sun at sunset as it was setting on the horizon over the period of a year. I came up with the idea of using Stellarium to answer that question.

Simulation of 4 Years of Sunsets

This is a simulation created in Stellarium of the Sun's position just before sunset over the period of 4 years as seen from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As the seasons change the Sun's position on the horizon wanders. To create this simulation I modified the Stellarium script "Sunset to Sunset" [which allows you lock the time interval to sunset] to suit my needs. It is part of the Dawn/dusk/sunrise/sunset jumps script package available on the lower part of the Stellarium Script Engine page.

Simulation of the Sun's Position at 4pm Over 4 Years

This is a simulation created in Stellarium of the Sun's position at 4pm (non Daylight Savings Time) over the period of 4 years as seen from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As the seasons change, the Sun's angle in the sky and compass direction change.

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By Andrew, August 12, 2009 10:01 pm

Here is a photo of a meteor trail from the Perseid Meteor Shower above West Dover. The photo was taken on August 12, 2009 around 10pm. The image was captured using an intervalometer that was set to take a series of long exposure images.