When the conditions are right, you can see the Milky Way in New Jersey. Two views, a 5 minute and 15 minute exposure.
Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 300 sec). (David J Mathre)Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 900 sec). (David J Mathre)
I am back in New Jersey after a short trip to San Francisco. I hate flying and this trip was bad. I spent 4 hours in the plane before taking off in Philadelphia (we did get back to the gate for a short stop to avoid the 3 hour federal regulation rules). Ultimately it took 12 hours from the time I left my office to get to the hotel in San Francisco. I hate flying, and would rather drive. For the return flight, the airline decided there were too many empty seats and substituted a smaller plane (and bumped 20+ passengers). ARRG! I just wanted to get home, and was not interested in a $400 future credit. Ultimately I got a seat on the original flight. It was a middle seat, and I had to force the armrest down to separate me from the over sized person next to me oozing into my seat. I hate flying. I hate flying. I hate flying.
Star Trails. Following Hurricane Irene, we had a couple of days and nights with very clear skies. You could even see the Milky Way (although a lot dimmer than in locations with less light pollution). I set up a Nikon D3s camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens to do star trails last night. The settings on the camera were manual (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, bulb). The exposure time was controlled with a MC-36 itervelometer (delay 5 sec, long 59 sec, interval 1 sec, N —). In camera long exposure noise reduction was turned off. The 1 second interval is required to allow the data to get transferred from the camera to the card, and effectively have one image taken every 60 seconds (1 minute). The MC-36 is required for exposures longer than 30 seconds. After the images were transferred to the computer, the RAW images were processed with Lightroom, and converted to JPG. The JPG images were then processed using Startrails.exe program to make composites. The following images show a single exposure, then startrail composites of 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes, and 300 minutes. Some high level clouds came in for the 300 minute (5 hour) image.
North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Single image before using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 2 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 5 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 15 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 30 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 60 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 120 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 300 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)
I used the images taken overnight to create a time-lapse video of the night sky. Although faint, you can see the Milky Way in New Jersey. The time-lapse video was created using Adobe PhotoShop CS5 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
Late August Star Trails. Since it looked like the sky was going to be clear last night, I left a camera out on the deck to get some star trail images. The first one was before midnight, and the second one after midnight. I did this set with a fisheye lens to get as much of the sky as possible. There is a tree in the front of the house that is blocking the northern star. I also used the images to create a time-lapsed video of the night sky.
North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 800, 16 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Composite of 326 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 800, 16 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Composite of 326 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)
Perseid Meteor Shower. Conditions for viewing the Perseid Meteors this year were not good. The moon was full with relatively high humidity and some clouds. I set two cameras up to take images overnight, and got maybe three images of meteors. I’ve made a time-lapse movie from the two image sets.
As a side note, I am running out of hard disk space. I could get another WD My Book external drive, but have run out of USB and Firewire ports on my computer. I’m thinking about a Dobro disk array. What ever I do, I also need to maintain an off-site backup copy. I worry about some of the cloud options, both due to cost and the fact that ATT limits me to 5 GB/month of broadband internet access.
Perseid Meteor and Bright Full Moon. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 25 sec).Perseid Meteor. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/4, 29 sec).
