Astronomy - David Mathre Photography

Tuesday (18-January-2022) — New Jersey

Wintertime Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco, White-throated Sparrow, Common Grackle, Northern Cardinal.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

While taking the trash out, I noticed that the moon was nearly full. Actually one day after the full moon. Since the sky was clear, I also set cameras up to do some star trails. There definitely are more jets flying than one and two years ago. Also a couple of meteor trails. A couple of notes using the Leica Q2 monochrome for composite star trail images. The ISO needs to be 100 and the exposure time no greater than 4 seconds, otherwise a second dark (shutter closed) image is taken and subtracted to remove sensor noise. Also, I wish the camera had an option to connect an external power source so I could take longer sequences.

full moon. (David J Mathre) — Full Moon. Image taken with a Leica SL2 camera and Sigma 150-600 mm sport lens (ISO 100, 600 mm, f/8, 1/1000 sec). (David J Mathre)

Star Trails. (David J Mathre) — Star and Jet Trails looking South. Composite of 273 images [19:00 – 21:15] taken with a Leica SL2 camera and Loawa 9 mm f/5.6 W-Dreamer lens (ISO 100, 9 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated using PhotoShop (statistics, maximum). (David J Mathre)

Day 2 of the Bok Choi seeds sprouting time-lapse videos. First video, images taken every 1 minute for 13 hours 36 minutes then displayed at 12 frames/second. The second video images taken every 1 minute for 5 hours, then displayed at 12 frames/second.

Daily Electric Energy Used (95.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (22.7 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Some sun and a bit warmer outside so the resistance heaters were not needed, but the Geothermal HVAC system was on most of the day. Deficit of 73.0 kWh.

Thursday (13-January-2022) — New Jersey

Wintertime Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, Dark-eyed Junco.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

While taking the recycling out last night I noticed a moon ring (22° halo) in the sky.

moon halo. (David J Mathre) — Moon Ring (22° halo). Image taken with a Lieca Q2 monochrome camera with a 28 mm f/1.7 lens (ISO 1600, 28 mm, f/1.7, 1/8 sec). (David J Mathre)

Daily Electric Energy Used (69.4 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.4 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 41.0 kWh.

Sunday (12-December-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Northern Flicker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, European Starling, American Robin, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco, Common Grackle, Northern Cardinal.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Night sky and star trails using a Leica Q2 Monochrome camera. One limitation is the camera takes a 2nd blank (shutter closed) exposure to subtract out sensor noise anytime the exposure is > 4 seconds or the ISO is > 100. With other cameras from Nikon and Fuji, I am able to turn the long exposure noise reduction off, Also, when taking an interval collecting both DNG and JPG the camera stops collecting images after 5 minutes (60 exposures). When recording DNG images, the camera collects 50 minutes (600 exposures). Images were processed with Capture One Pro, and the star trails created using PhotoShop (statistics, maximum).

Daily Electric Energy Used (53.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (30.6 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Mostly sunny. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 23.1 kWh.

Weekly Electric Energy Used (400 kWh) from Sense. Weekly Solar Electric Energy Produced (128 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 272 kWh.

Tuesday (23-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Blue Jay.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

The Opossum is back.

My main 360 camera a Garmin VIRB-360 is getting old and has been discontinued by the manufacturer. The one lens has a scratch, and a battery failed. I’ve started looking at alternatives. I did this once before, trying out the Nikon Mission 360 (discontinued), Ricoh Theta, Insta360 One 4K. Each had issues. Later, I found the Ricoh Theta Z1 16-GB model then 64-GB model to be useful. But with idiosyncrasies. They have an interval mode, but with a minimum interval of 6 seconds (jpg) or 10 seconds (DNG). I decided to look at some of the newer 360 cameras. Insta360 One X2 and Labpano Lab Pilot ERA.

The following night time-lapse video was taken with the Insta360 One X2. I set the camera up outdoors connected to an external USB-C power supply to take raw (DNG) images every 30 seconds. With the external battery, the camera continued taking images all night, even though the temperature dropped below freezing. Processing the raw images was a bit of a problem since the raw image is not the standard equirectangular format. You need to convert the images via the Insta360 Studio 2021 program (batch mode) to generate a standard equirectangular image. Adobe Photoshop doesn’t appear to make time-lapse videos with DNG files, so I also had to convert the images from DNG to TIFF (using Capture One Pro) before making the time-lapse videos. With this camera I will need a better workflow.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Autumn Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Insta360 One X2 camera. ISO 504, f/2, 2 sec. Insta360 Raw (DNG) format. (David J Mathre)

Time-lapse Video (Little Planet View).

Time-lapse Video (Tunnel View).

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 kWh.

Thursday (18-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Day Nature and Working Outside and in the Garage in New Jersey.

Full moon before the lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, a rain storm came through while the eclipse took place.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, House Finch, Common Grackle.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

My Little Planet time-lapse videos for the day. 1) Red Rover. Moving items, switching from the front loader to forks, adding additional support to the pallets being used to support the tractor implements. 2) Tent Box. Starting to install the inner cold weather lining in the tent box. It got dark before I could finish.

Daily Electric Energy Used (41.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (25.7 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Mostly sunny. Deficit of 16.0 kWh.