We have had a significant amount of rain lately. It's been so much I am even tired of it though I shouldn't be as we will probably now go for months before it rains again. We were in drought so needed it badly. The clouds have been very interesting due to the rains. I captured this image while walking. The cloud in the center kind of resembled a mushroom cloud at first but then reminded me of a dog's head. 😁
On This past Monday we had storms move through the area. We lucked out with just some heavy rains and a little very small hail but in other areas of the state, there were tornados. In the evening I went outside and saw that the sky was looking rather ominous but cool. The sky to the south, in this photo, had all these Mammatus clouds and then to the west had a very cool painted effect.
I had forgotten about the eclipse till I was outside the other evening, 9/17, and was reminded so I grabbed my camera and took a few photos. This is the first (left) and last one I took. It never changed very much in about 15 minutes time. It was still interesting and fun to capture. Wish I hadn't blown out the bright part in the first image so badly. 😏
I captured this image this past Friday evening. The Northern Lights were visible across the United States even as far south as Florida which was quite amazing. When I took this image, you could not see them in my area with the naked eye. I was doing Night Capture images on my phone and 10 second exposures on my actual camera to be able to pick it up in any detail. This image is from my actual camera. The color has not been touched, I used various brightening techniques that I have learned through doing various astrophotography images to bring out the aurora more. I could tell while I was taking the photos that I was getting something but it was quite interesting to see just how much was captured. We didn't have a lot of the vivid red that some people saw or the curtain effect that I have seen in Minnesota but it was still pretty cool to see and capture.
Today's image is another astrophotography one that I have been trying to learn and get better at. I have been working with this image off and on since I took it on the 4th of this month. This is Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks that has been able to be seen with binoculars or a telescope if you know where to look. When I captured it, it was visible shortly after sunset in the constellation of Aries and somewhat near Jupiter, which appears as a star in the image due to the longer exposure. I used a 70mm lens as using anything larger made it very difficult to spot due to the comet being incredibly dim to the naked eye. This is a combination of 12 ten second exposures, which were stacked and then processed in my photo program and also using a gradient extractor due to the uneven light from the horizon. It's not perfect and I have a lot to learn but I was fairly happy with what i was able to get. If you look closely you can see faint bits of the tail extending out, I wish I had been able to pull out more of that but the quality was degrading. I am not sure if the comet is still visible, it was getting lower on the horizon every day. I should have captured it in January at least. At this point in time it was too low too get very many images before it was gone.
On Monday, 4/8, there was an eclipse of the sun over North America. We were not in totality but I still went out to capture it as we got to around 85 to 87 percent. I would have really liked a chance at total but from the news it sounded that to travel would be fairly crazy with all the people trying to do the same thing. Even at 85% it was cool to see and experience as it got cooler and darker out. This is my composite of what I was able to capture. It started a bit earlier than I thought so I missed the very beginning. I shot this sequence with my camera on my telescope.
Today's image is the second one I took with my telescope. I was practicing with different eyepieces and the moon was a good subject to use during the day when I could see what I was doing. 😊
A little over a week ago, while out on a bike ride, there were some clouds to the west that were capturing the light in neat ways. There was some rain from them as well though by the time they got to our area that had stopped. We did get some rain that evening though which we needed badly. We still need a lot more as the ground is very dry and cracked still and the plants are still struggling. I am worried about my Lilacs, they are not looking very good.
The moon and Venus were fairly close to each other last week and I was able to see and capture it. I had gone out to bring in the Oriole's jelly so as not to attract any animals to it during the night and saw this sight. I liked this image with a bit of tree branches in it.
Today's image is one that I am quite happy with how it turned out and it took me a while to do. I took this image back in mid November but I needed to process it and it took me several nights of tweaking to get a result I was happy with and watching YouTube videos for tips on those tweaks. This is the Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters which is an open star cluster. In dark areas this cluster can be seen with the naked eye but it can be fairly faint. I took this image using a 300mm lens and my camera on it's astrophotography setting. I shot 9 images at F11, 20sec, 3200 ISO which were then stacked together to get rid of some noise in a program called Deep Sky Stacker. I then worked on it in my Photo program to bring out the gas clouds around the stars. I am pretty pleased for my first effort on bringing those clouds out, how this turned out. I am looking forward to redoing my Orion Nebula image this winter.
An older moon shot in the blue hour. There was a lunar eclipse last week but I missed seeing it. I've seen a couple and I was too lazy and tired to get up to look. 😁 I'm looking forward to less moonlight because I just got a new lens that I want to try some astrophotography with. Clear skies as well.
It's a double digit day today! 😀 On the last day of September, it had rained in some places off to the west. I didn't get any but it provided the view of a lovely rainbow out my office window that morning.
A couple of weeks ago now I went out and took some images of the Milky Way core. It's the center of the Milky Way galaxy and has a lot of detail and beauty in it which makes it the subject of photos. This is my first attempt at getting a good image of it.
There were some difficulties because my chosen spot to photograph it had much more light pollution than I was expecting and also the moon was out to the west and causing even more light pollution. It was windy out as well so I was not able to get as many good images as I wanted. This is a stack of 6 images. You use stacked images to take out some of the noise created while using long exposures and high ISO levels in the camera. I then watched several videos to learn some techniques to bring out the detail in what I captured and this is the result after I tried those techniques. Not the best one ever, but I was happy with my first effort. The glow at the bottom is the light pollution I am talking about.
Last week, this moon was in the news quite a bit because it was the last "super moon" of the year and it also coincided with the Perseid meteor shower. I didn't see any meteors but I did get this image of the moon. 300mm lens at 800 ISO and 1/160 shutter speed at f11 for detail.
On Sunday evening there was a lunar eclipse occurring. I only photographed the first part of it due to I have photographed a full one before and I am getting older and needed to get to bed as it was a work night. 😄 I only had time to work with one photo but I was rather pleased with it. When viewed large especially, you can see stars in the image as well. Not a sight you can usually photograph in one exposure with a full moon. I thought the color turned out well too. I'll have to share my sequence one day after I have time to process the images I took.
Today's images and post is a bit different. Mars has been visible in the sky for awhile now. Last month there was one evening when it and the moon were fairly close together so I was able to capture both. You can see the reddish tint to Mars even though it's rather small in the image.
This is another beautiful sunrise that I was treated to on my way to work last month. Lately the skies have not been so beautiful and dramatic. I think last night's sunset was affected by the western wildfires, the sky was hazy looking and the sun was very red and disappeared before the horizon.
We have been having some lovely Sunsets lately. Maybe we have had more beautiful ones than I remember and I am just seeing them more since I have been walking in the evenings more. Either way, they have been lovely to see and enjoy. Usually the summer is hot dry and cloudless, this one has been different so I think that's really why. 😀
