Night Sky - David Mathre Photography

Tuesday (27-March-2012) — New Jersey

Early Spring Night Sky over New Jersey. NASA ATREX Mission. Early Morning Sky Lit Up By Five NASA Sounding Rockets.

Early this morning NASA launched five sounding rockets from Wallops Island, Virginia over a seven minute period to study the jet stream in the upper atmosphere at the edge of space. Once the rockets reached the thermosphere they were set to release trimethyaluminum that would react to create a cloud of aluminum oxide. This mission has been canceled several times waiting for clear skies from New Jersey to South Carolina. I set up a Nikon D3x camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 wide angle lens and pointed it south-east to capture an image every minute starting just after midnight to see if I could to catch something from the mission. The rockets were launched starting just before 5 AM (EDT).

The following is a composite of 40 images combined using the startrails program showing the release from all 5 rockets. You see the star trails, a couple of jet trails, all five of the ATREX rocket cloud releases and as a bonus a meteor trail.

NASA ATREX Jet Stream Study Lights up The Night Sky. Composite of 40 images taken with a Nikon D3x and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/2.8, 59 sec) processed using DxO Pro, and Startrails. (David J Mathre)

Friday (17-February-2009) — New Jersey

Backyard Winter Night Sky in New Jersey: Star and Jet Trails.

I used a 16 mm Fisheye lens to take acquire some winter night sky images. The images were combined using the startrails.exe program to get the star trail images. The first image is a composite of 15 60 second images relatively early in the evening. The next three are composites of 16, 35, and 300 second (5 minute) images.

Winter Sky Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D700 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, f/2.8, 60 sec). Composite of 15 images processed with Startrails program. (David J. Mathre)

Winter Sky Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D700 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, f/2.8, 300 sec). Composite of 16 images processed with Startrails program. (David J. Mathre)

Winter Sky Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D700 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, f/2.8, 300 sec). Composite of 35 images processed with Startrails program. (David J. Mathre)

Winter Sky Star and Jet Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D700 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, f/2.8, 300 sec). Composite of 14 images processed with Startrails program. (David J. Mathre)

Wednesday (04-January-2012) — New Jersey

Backyard Winter Night Sky in New Jersey: Star Trails and Quadranitids Meteors.

The sky was clear last night so I set up two cameras to record the night sky. The SpaceWeather site reported that the Quadrantids meteor shower should peak in the early morning hours. The Nikon D3x with a 24 mm f/1.4G lens was set up to look north above my roof. I used an external power supply for this camera so I wouldn’t need to change batteries during the night. The second camera was a Nikon D3 with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens looking south. For both cameras, I used the MC-35 remote set for 59 second exposures, once a minute (the extra second is needed to transfer the image from the camera to the memory card). It was cold (getting down to 10° F), and I was glad that at least one camera was using an external power supply. I had to change the battery in the D3 every 2 hours, and even then it was so cold that the battery ran out before the time. The following are a meteor trail image and a time-lapsed video of everything from the night.

Quadrantids Meteor Trail. Night Sky Over New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 24 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/2, 59 sec). (David J. Mathre)

Monday (02-January-2012) — New Jersey

Backyard Winter Night Sky over New Jersey: Moon in Conjunction with Jupiter.

Jupiter is in Conjunction with the Moon Tonight. If you get a chance, go out and look. (http://www.spaceweather.com/). Jupiter is the small dot in the bottom right, about 4° from the moon. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 300 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec).

Moon with Jupiter in Conjunction. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 300 mm f/2.8 VR lens (ISO 100, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec). (David J Mathre)

Saturday (03-December-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Autumn Night Sky in New Jersey: Time-lapse Video and Star Trails.

It is hard to believe that it is December. I have not posted anything since Thanksgiving. A lot of end of year activities at work, still more to clean up in the yard after the early snow storm, and finally getting caught up with the Drobo external data drive recovery and new Drobo backup. I have a few images taken with the new Nikon 1 V1 camera that I need to go back and post, along with some pros and cons about the new camera.

The sky was clear, so I put two cameras out early this morning after the moon went down for night sky images. These images were used to put together the following time-lapse video.