Photography

Another clear night, another great shot at viewing Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1). This time, I chose a location away from the powerlines and other anthropogenic obstructions. Venus, the best sky object to use as a reference point in seeking McNaught, emerged from the twilight around 5:40pm and the comet was visible shortly thereafter.

Canon 30D 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/2 sec exposure

Canon 30D 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 8/10 sec exposure – Click for full image

The comet dipped below the horizon around 6:05pm as it chased down the sun below the horizon…and I was able to snap of a few more images within minutes of the last sighting:

Canon 30D 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1 sec exposure – Click for full image

At 6:05pm CDT, I likely said goodbye to McNaught, as the next several nights (the last few night it will be visible) are likely to be cloudy.

See last night’s post for more photos and tips on finding McNaught in the evening sky.

My first chase of the new year and I was hoping to see no clouds! The heavens were smiling on me and as of today, the 2007 chase season is off to a great start. Let’s hope it is a sign of good things to come for 2007.

Canon 30D 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, ½ sec exposure – Click for full image

After a frustrating attempt at viewing Comet McNaught last night, tonight: Victory! This chase took me all of a half mile away from home to a spot where I could get a clear view of the western sky. After a clear night last night and about an hour-long valiant but fruitless effort, I feared my chances may diminish with increasing cloudcover this evening. It is rare that I chase any event while hoping for clear skies, but this is one of those times. Fortunately, the clouds held off just long enough to get in a few good shots as the comet crept closer to the horizon.

Click for full image

The sky maps (1, 2, and morning map) and directions for viewing available online were lacking the kind of detail that my amateur astronomer tracking experience called for. As such, I’ll detail my experience with a few practical tips that may help you find Comet McNaught from your location.

• First, Use the Sky and Telescope Comet McNaught Sky Map to narrow in on the proper location.
• I went out after the sun was below the horizon for about a half an hour. Tonight’s sunset was technically at 5:15pm CDT with the end of Civil Twilight at 5:44pm. This was about the time that I went out and set up.
• The first object to become visible in the western sky this week (after the sun has set) is Venus. This is an important feature that you can use to find Comet McNaught.
• The comet first became visible about 3 or 4 degrees above the horizon around 5:55pm. I found it by taking several “scanning” shots of the sky at about 100mm and zooming in on the image on the on-camera LCD. It may very well have been visible earlier, but I was still busy scanning a big portion of the western sky trying to find it.
• I had along an inexpensive pair of 8 x 21 binoculars, but they weren’t very helpful until after I had already located the comet.
• The horizontal distance between the comet and Venus was approximately two fists when my arms were extended in front of me.
• The comet never became visible to my naked eye (my vision is not bad).
• The comet dropped below the horizon at about 6:05pm.

I will be heading out again tomorrow evening as long as the skies remain clear. This time, I may attempt to locate a more photogenic location that would provide a more pleasing foreground (other than power lines!). If anything interest results, I’ll be sure to post back here.

All images on this page were shot on my Canon 30D with the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens @ 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/2s exposures. Tomorrow evening I will try a few longer exposures.

Read more about Comet McNaught on the main spaceweather.com homepage.

See more photographs at the Spaceweather.com Comet McNaught Gallery

5:36pm CDT; July 13, 2006

While flying from Kansas City to Las Vegas (via Denver) on July 13th, we were fortunate enough to observe a couple of beautiful thunderstorms from about 40,000 feet. Having the window seat on the right side of the west-bound plane afforded me a beautiful view of a string of storms lined up along an E-W boundary drapped over northern Kansas and southern Nebraska:

Low resolution archived radar image from NCDC.
If you know where I can find a better quality image from July 13-14th, email me

Frontier Airlines even offers in-flight tracking from every seat: The small LCD screens offer up several channels of cable TV programming as well as a real-time graphical representation of the plane’s location, speed, and altitude:

Below are a couple more shots of the same cell in NE Kansas taken several minutes apart between 5:36 and 5:44pm CDT:

Ever since first reading about it, and even more so seeing what High Dynamic Range photography (HDR) techniques could do, I have been intrigued by the possibilities. In a nutshell, the HDR imaging technique involves utilizing software that digitally combines multiple photographs of the same subject taken at different exposures - either different shutter speeds, different f-stops, or some combination thereof. Following the layering of these images, a follow-up process known as tone mapping is required to flesh out the details. The result is not a simple overlay of multiple images, but rather a best-of-each-image blending of the detail. The blown-out highlights of an overexposed image are subdued and the underexposed shadows of the other end of the bracket are brought out. After viewing a few samples posted on various message boards, I began reading more about the technique as well as checking out numerous spectacular samples here, here, and some great and not so great (overdone) samples here. I started by downloading the trial version of Photomatix.

Earlier in the month I had the opportunity to make a few test runs at this and found it to be surprisingly simple. While spending the day in Kansas City, I made a point of shooting several brackets of photos inside and outside of Union Station. The image above is a combination of five photographs. Three of the five images are shown below and as you can see, the HDR image jumps even more than the best exposure below (click image for larger view):

I also attempted the same at a Royals/Rangers game later that evening at Kauffman Stadium. This time, I took a few more liberties with the virtually infinite adjustments available in the tone mapping part of the application to really make the image ‘pop’, although it admittedly takes on a more artistic bent rather than a purely documentary angle.

Notice there are more than 9 Rangers on the field…this is because the images were not auto-bracketed on the camera; it took me a fraction of a second to make the manual adjustments between each frame and in that time, some players moved slightly, like the first baseman, the runner on 2nd, and the third base coach.

I’ve never been into much “photoshopping” of images…the only edits I’ve made in the past have been to crop and resize and of course I recognize that photography is not purely a science and that even making manual adjustments on the camera constitutes a certain level of “editting” to some, but when it comes to exploring the artistic angles now possible, some of these HDR techniques certainly pique my interest.

While 2″+ diameter hail pelted NE Lawrence and 0.82″ of rain fell over KTGX, we were treated to a spectacular light show for several hours on Sunday evening. All shots: 18mm, f/5.6 for 5 seconds. Click the first image for larger view (apparently only the first image of each post is able to be enlarged via clicking - I just realized this tonight after checking some older posts) (corrected 02/09/07).