Backyard Autumn Night Sky Over New Jersey: Time-lapse Video of the Stars, Star Trails and the Moon.
It was clear and I had several cameras out capturing the night sky. I used the images to create a time-lapse video.
Category: Astronomy
Views of the sun, moon, and stars
Friday (04-November-2011) — New Jersey
Backyard Astronomy in New Jersey: Sun and Moon.
The sky was clear so I took my telescope out. First to see the big sunspot (AR 1339), and then later the waxing gibbous moon. The Questar telescope comes with a solar filter to safely view the sun and sunspots.
28-October-2011
Day 11 and Counting
My Drobo disk-array is rebuilding after adding a new drive. Don’t know how long it will take. New images to follow. The down side to large storage solutions such as Drobo is the time required for backup and restore. Not sure how many days this will take!!!!
Winter is Coming!
Latest report from the National Weather Service: Snow Saturday Night?
Tonight: A chance of rain after 2am. Cloudy, with a low around 36. East
wind between 3 and 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts
of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
Saturday: Rain, mainly
after 8am. High near 43. Breezy, with a north wind between 14 and 21 mph. Chance
of precipitation is 100%. New rainfall amounts between 1 and 2 inches possible.
Saturday Night: Rain and snow, becoming all snow after midnight.
Low around 28. Blustery, with a north wind between 17 and 24 mph. Chance of
precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 47. Northwest wind between 9 and
14 mph.
Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 29.
Northwest wind around 7 mph.
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Check out an image of the Moon over Colorado taken 4 years ago today with a Nikon D2xs and 200-400 mm VR lens: 28-October-2011
19-October-2011
Day 2 and Counting
My Drobo disk-array is rebuilding after adding a new drive. Don’t know how long it will take. New images (including a meteor caught last night with two cameras) to follow. The down side to large storage solutions such as Drobo is the time required for backup and restore. Not sure if this will be hours or days!!!!
One year ago today I posted an image of the moon taken from my backyard in New Jersey: 19-October-2010
Sunday (09-October-2011) — New Jersey
Autumn Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.
After nearly two months of rain, rain, and cloudy skies — we finally have been able to see the sun and very blue skies. At night, I’ve taken the opportunity to get night sky images, as well as lunar images through some of my exotic 300, 400, 500, and 600 mm lenses. One of the problems I was having for the overnight time-lapsed images was that the lens would get covered by condensation during the night and ruin the night sky images. ARRG! As the weekend progressed, the temperature rose and the relative humidity decreased. I finally got a full night image set with limited problems with condensation. The first time-lapse video and star trail was recorded with a Nikon D3x camera and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens @ 14 mm. There was a bit of condensation that affected the end of the video from this lens. The second time-lapse video and star trail image was recorded with a Nikon D3 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens looking north from my deck.
Lessons learned: 1) I need to look into a resistive heater to keep the lenses warm enough to prevent condensation. 2) I didn’t know that the 14-24 mm lens would creep if pointed straight up — during one night the focal length changed from 14 to 18 mm. For the last night, I used Gaffer tape to fix the focal length of the lens at 14 mm. 3) My tripod/heads are not strong enough to prevent movement when I change batteries. Look into an external power supply and not batteries for long overnight image session.
