Let’s start with, did I get out myself and photograph or video the occultation of Venus by the moon yesterday that I was alerting you of?
No. I mean, I did get out, and the day had been all nice and clear, but by the time of the occultation, the sky had produced thick yet wildly variable clouds that couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted to be assholes or not. They apparently
Wow, it’s been better than two years since the last ‘Too Cool’ post – at least, the last with that in the title, though as a category, there’s definitely been a few since then. This one comes courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day, though I’m a little lax, since this was yesterday’s.
Taken by John
S’okay, not much warning on one of them, but if you’re here, you don’t really need the prompting, even if it’s prompting to not be here – you may not need that either. But tomorrow, June 13th, is National Get Outdoors Day, or at least, USA Get Outdoors Day; it may not extend beyond our own country here. Now granted, the heat index
I actually have some other things that I was about to post, but while down distributing critter corn I noticed the moon was looking pleasant, and quickly got set up before it disappeared behind the house. So it’s bumping the other things temporarily.
Ehhhh, not bad, and at 7.4% illuminated, hardly the smallest crescent that I’ve captured, but we can do better.
This is
So, checking out the ISS Transit Finder site, I had warning that early this morning (like, 4:21 AM) the Chinese Tiangong space station would transit (pass in front of) the nearly-full moon. The weather looked like it was going to be right, so I set my alarm and made sure I was up and ready, camera focus locked in, exposure
… and usually do, without a filter even.
So I did go out this morning just before the peak of the Lyrids meteor shower (which was supposed to be around 4 AM locally,) and fired off a lot of frames. Stars were visible but not distinctly so, leading me to believe either the humidity was very high or a faint haze was obscuring the sky (which is the same thing I guess.) I was largely watching
A quick reminder that the Lyrids meteor shower is set to peak on the evening of the 21st-22nd, even though it’s technically going on right now – this is apparently a shower with a long period but a very distinct and sharp peak, so your
In case you missed it, there was a post specific to moon photography last week, if you were looking to pursue that. This will deal with other kinds of night photography.
Note, too, that a significant amount of my macro work and even quite a few videos are all shot at night, mostly because that’s when certain subjects appear, but also because it’s easier to get close to those same subjects
Originally, I was going to do this about night photography in general, with a subset of photographing the moon itself, then realized that the moon alone had enough for a full post. So other kinds of night photography will be along in a later post, perhaps next week. No promises though.
As a bare minimum for chasing moon photos, I have to recommend a firm tripod and a remote shutter release, because
Perhaps having read my previous post where I dumped on February for being so dismal and rainy, it responded by producing a quite nice day today, as in, no jacket required, so take, take me home. The handful of leftover pics I had slotted to throw up here are now superseded by the ones I actually got today, and there’s just a few, so settle in.
We need to start with, the weeping willow (Salix
