Astrophotography – Page 5 – Circadianreflections Blog

In the Face of the Sun

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012Posted in Astrophotograhpy, California, Landscapes, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Arts, Astronomy, Astrophotography, James Lick Observatory, Langston Hughes, Mt Hamilton, Nikon D700, Photography, Poetry, San Jose CaliforniaLeave a comment

Copyright © 2012 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.
“To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.”
~ Langston Hughes-Dream Variations Last week on the 21st of March several friends and I rose before dawn to meet to photograph the Crescent Moon rising over Mt. Hamilton, and James Lick Observatory in San Jose, CA.

We also knew that shortly after the Moon rose the sun would also rise over
Mt. Hamilton, and the observatory, but we needed to change our location
to get the angle right. Arriving at our chosen place; a wide open field that once was a neighborhood, long torn down;

the only reminders were the scars of streets, foundations, and the trees, shrubs, and grass which dripped with morning dew.

We walked carefully through it avoiding the holes that housed the Gophers who reside there now until we found just the angle that faced the Rising Sun.

We set up our tripods, camera gear, and we donned special armor this day; a filter to protect and shield our sensors, and eyes.

Then we waited and watched the brightening sky for the first little glimmer of the golden halo that announces the rising morning star!
Blended double processed frame + 1
Nikon D700 & D300s| Nikkor 80-200mm + Tamron 1.4x Extender
How I made it
When I took the photograph I used a Solar filter which protected my camera’s sensor, and my eyes.
This is what it looks like RAW from my camera. I really like all the foliage in silhouette, but I knew in order to recover the color

of the sun I would lose all that detail.
I wanted a finished photograph that included the silhouetted foliage, and color in the sun.
To do that I would have to blend or combine at least 2 frames. I made a copy of the negative above then uploaded that into my photo editing software Lightroom 4.
Then I removed all the color and silhouetted foliage in order to recover the sun’s color.
Once that was done I had this frame. I made another copy of my original negative then uploaded both it,
and the edited negative above into Photoshop CS5 where using layer masks I blended the two frames together.
It was pretty, but I thought it lacked something to make the composition balanced, and a bit more interesting so I added a Golden Eagle.
A photo I had taken back in January of this year. I cloned out the sun flare spot, and added my copyright signature et Voila! Fini!
My companions that morning have published their photos from the morning which
you can see by following the links here, here, here,and here,

Rising Waning Crescent Moon over Mt. Hamilton

March 21, 2012March 21, 2012Posted in Astrophotograhpy, California, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Astrophotography, California, Crescent Moon, D300s, Full Moon. James Lick Observatory, Mt Hamilton, Nikon, Phases of the Moon, PhotographyLeave a comment

I rose early again this morning to meet 4 friends to try once more to photograph the rising Crescent Moon over Mt. Hamilton. Can you see it? You may have to click the photo once or twice to view larger. Though the sky was much clearer this morning of fog, low clouds, and haze we were competing with the later hour and approaching dawn. I couldn’t see it with my naked eye. Thankfully my camera did, and I was able to tease it out using Lightroom4.

We shot the sunrise shortly after this. I hope to post a photo from that later. I used my new Solar filter for it.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 80-200mm@200mm+ Tamorn 1.4TC| |f11| 2 sec| ISO 800| Manual Mode| Tripod|

Être en plein Soleil

March 19, 2012March 19, 2012Posted in California, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Astrophotography, Nikon D300S, SunLeave a comment

My first shot of the sun! I’m making baby steps further into Astrophotography with the addition of a Solar Filter. The filter came in last week, but we’ve had nothing but rain and overcast skies since then so I’ve not been able to try it out.
Today we have partly cloudy skies and no rain. I was so excited to finally have sun that I set up and started shooting and thought I was fully extended to 200mm. Sigh, I wasn’t even close!
There are clouds moving over the sun at the moment. I’ll set up again and take another shot this afternoon.
I’m so blond all too often.

Planetary Conjunction

February 27, 2012February 27, 2012Posted in Astrophotograhpy, California, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Astrophotography, Jupiter, Moon, Night Photography, Nikkor, Nikon, Nikon D700, Photography, Planetary Conjunction, Venus2 Comments

Thanks Dali and Andy for reminding me about this astronomical event. Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon lined up in a triangle to form a special conjunction on Feb. 25, 2012. We spent a lot of time online emailing each other about places we liked to shoot this. I kept looking at this area of the city and I asked the guys to look at it too. After the guys looked at it on TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris) they too liked it and we decided to shoot it here. Andy didn’t join us he decided to make some progress on his computer project so it was Dali, Phil, and I who shot here. It was fun, but cold!

The forecast called for a clear sky, but what we had were intermittent clouds, and a low fog bank. As soon as Venus dropped into the fog we called it a night. The Crescent Moon is in those clouds, but Jupiter and Venus are clearly visible.

To see what Dali shot go here

To see Phil’s photo go here

First Photo of the New Year

January 6, 2012January 6, 2012Posted in Astrophotograhpy, California, Holidays, Nature, Nikon, Photography, TravelTagged 17-35mm f2.8, Astrophotography, D700, Long Exposure, Night Photography, Nikkor, Nikon, Photography, Travel3 Comments

1st night of the New Year — Copyright © 2012 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I spent the first few days of 2012 photographing parts of the Eastern Sierras with dear friends. This was our 2nd Annual New Years Photo Trip.
There wasn’t much snow in the high country so we were able to cross Tioga Pass to get to our base camp which was in Bishop, CA. From there we were pretty central to everything we had hoped to photograph. We roamed from Mammoth on the northern end to Alabama Hills in the south.
Sunrises, sunsets, and a bit of scouting during the day was on the agenda, and on our first night we had a clear sky so we drove south to Ancient Bristle Pine Cone National Park and shot in the Patriarch Grove. The elevation is between 10,000 and 11,000ft. Because the air is so thin up here these trees grow slowly. This harsh environment makes their wood denser and stronger to resist pests, and disease. The oldest tree is 4600 years old! Their twisted limbs and odd shapes make great subjects and foreground for star trails.

Once you get the focus sharp, your settings selected, and your intervelometer set up you can sit back and watch the sky, or do what we did; go back to the car and turn on the heater. It was 26 degrees outside!

This star trail is made from 82 frames each were 58 second exposures. I cloned out 6 airplanes and 1 shooting star.
The trip was great fun, and I’m looking forward to our 2013 New Years Photo adventure.

Moonset Over San Francisco, California

November 9, 2011November 9, 2011Posted in Astrophotograhpy, California, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Astrophotography, Moon Set, Night Scapes, Nikkor, Nikon, Photography, San Francisco SkyliineLeave a comment

I rose pretty early this morning to make the hour drive to this location to meet my friend Andy aka Stargazer to shoot the Moonset.
He checked and double checked the webcams in the area hoping for no fog. We did have a fog bank sitting right where we hoped to shoot the setting Moon, but we got lucky; it peeked out enough to make a pretty picture, and the color! It really was this color! It was gorgeous. Worth getting up at 3AM for.
We have rain in the forecast tomorrow, but if we get a break and no fog in the morning we may try it again.

Andy has his photo up from this morning please check it out. It’s awesome!
www.flickr.com/photos/sharpshutter/6328755145/in/contacts…

Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets from Young Stars

August 31, 2011August 31, 2011Posted in Astrophotograhpy, PhotographyTagged Astrophotography, Goddard Space Flight Center, Herbig–Haro object, Hubble Space Telescope, NASALeave a comment

Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets from Young Stars, originally uploaded by NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

Via Flickr:
The glowing, clumpy streams of material shown in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope images are the signposts of star birth.

Ejected episodically by young stars like salvos from a cannon, the blobby material zips along at more than 440,000 miles (770,000 kilometers) an hour. Called Herbig-Haro or HH objects, these speedy outflows have a bumpy ride through space.

When fast-moving blobs “rear-end” slower gas, bow shocks (the blue features) arise as the material heats up. Bow shocks are glowing waves of matter similar to waves produced by the bow of a ship plowing through water. In HH 2, at lower right, several bow shocks (the compact blue and white features) can be seen where fast-moving clumps bunch up like cars in a traffic jam. In HH 34, at lower left, a grouping of merged bow shocks reveals regions that brighten and fade over time as the heated material cools, shown in red, where the shocks intersect.

In HH 47, at top, a long jet of material has burst out of a dark cloud of gas and dust that hides the newly forming star. The blue, fan-shaped region at left is the edge of a cavity illuminated by the fledgling star. A massive clump of jet material collides with upstream gas, creating the white bow-shaped shock wave at right.

These images are part of a series of time-lapse movies astronomers have made showing the outflows’ motion over time. The movies were stitched together from images taken over a 14-year period by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Hubble followed the jets over three epochs. Observations of HH 2 were made from 1994, 1997, and 2007; HH 34 from 1994, 1998, and 2007; and HH 47 from 1994, 1999, and 2008.

The outflows are roughly 1,350 light-years from Earth. HH 34 and HH 2 reside near the Orion Nebula, in the northern sky. HH 47 is located in the southern constellation Vela.
Object Names: HH 47, HH 34, HH 2
Image Type: Astronomical/Annotated

Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Hartigan (Rice University)..NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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