The sky was cloudy when I tried to photograph some of the Geminid meteor shower on 14 Dec. After midnight I set up my camera with a 7.5mm fisheye lens in one of the nearby fields. I adjusted it to take 120 30s exposures automatically with a one second gap between each exposure to allow the file to be saved.
I’d expected to see perhaps a dozen shooting star images in the resulting photographs over that hour, especially as I’d seen one while I was setting up the tripod. I was wrong. And attached is the only other one in that hour-long set I captured where the clouds cleared enough to see the sky (and I wonder how many I missed in those one second gaps!) It just got gloomier and gloomier. But at least I could just wait indoors in the warm as it was near zero Centigrade outside.
I also made a time-lapse video of the photos. The meteor shows at about 3 seconds.
There was a full moon falling on Halloween, 31 October 2020 (it was also a so-called blue moon since there was a full moon on 1 October, so it was the second full moon of the month). The last full moon falling on Halloween was 76 years ago, in 1944. Not so long to wait for the next, which will be in 19 years, Halloween 31 October 2039.
For the first time in several weeks, the sky here was relatively clear with only a few high clouds passing by occasionally, so I was able to photograph the first Halloween full moon in my lifetime.
Halloween full moon 2020 ISO 200 1/500s f8.0 300mm (=600mm)
I posted an item on 7 June 2013 on photographing the ISS. As I now have a different camera and lenses and as we have clear skies I decided to do an update.
I now use the ISS Detector app on my phone to notify me of upcoming events. At 22:38 on Monday 27 July 2020 there was a possible nearly overhead ISS sighting (max. height 86°, appearing 27° above WNW disappearing 22° above ESE). The first quarter moon was not too bright and not likely to cause problems. So I set my tripod in the field below the farmhouse, in the best position to avoid the farmhouse and surrounding trees blocking the overflight path. I had a 7.5mm Samyang fisheye lens on my camera and set it at an angle to give me the likely full path across the diagonal of the image . With the lens set at f8, I opened the shutter just before the predicted appearance time. The ISS passed over and disappeared from sight just before the end of the path and I then shut the shutter. This is the resulting unedited image:
ISS 22:44 27 July 2020 ISO 400 f8 371s Entre-deux-Eaux 48° 13′ 53″ 6° 58′ 48″
As I was satisfied with that photograph, the following day I was just out taking some photographs of the moon with a 75-300mm zoom lens (and also attempting some photographs of Jupiter). I’d forgotten about the ISS but suddenly saw it appear above the orchard trees. Rather than trying to take partial path picture, I wondered whether it was possible to just take a snapshot of the ISS itself. I had no idea of exposure settings and had little time so just took a guess at what to use. I loosened the ball and socket mount so I could swivel the camera to track the ISS and set the lens to 75mm in the hope of seeing the ISS through the viewfinder with the wider view. That wasn’t too difficult and I was then able to zoom to 300mm (= 35mm full-frame 600mm) and to track the ISS, pressing the release several times to take photographs. The results were rather mixed, poorly exposed, and showed camera shake but gave me an indication of what might be possible.
So I decided I might be able to do better the next night with some proper preparation. I set the camera exposure to a faster shutter speed and higher ISO and also set the camera to take an automatic succession of photographs to try to reduce the initial movement from pressing the shutter release (at that focal length the camera is very sensitive to the slightest movement). I had to use the release button on the camera as I needed both hands to help track the ISS smoothly so couldn’t easily use my phone as a remote control.
I took over 100 photographs. About 10% have an image that on close inspection is discernible as an object rather than just a white, slightly blurred, blob. I doubt I would be able to get a better photograph with that lens. I would need the camera attached to a telescope which had automated tracking.
This shows one of the full images with the ISS arrowed. I’ve pasted an enlarged version of that faint white dot in the RH corner. The ISS in the image is only 20×16 pixels overall. It was pleasing as I’d not really expected such a positive result.
ISS 22:48:04 29 July 2020 ISO 3200 f6.7 1/640s 300mm
According to http://www.isstracker.com/historical the ISS was at 45.874N 3.008W (over Volvic in Central France) at an altitude of 262.45 miles and travelling at 17,144.65 mph.
We’d had several very sunny days this week so it was possible the nights would be clear and it seemed a good opportunity to try taking some moon photographs again. But I now had a different camera and lens combination (Olympus OM-D E-M1II + M.Zuiko 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 = 150-600mm 35m equiv), and needed to work out the best settings.
On 7 April I set up the tripod on the balcony and took a series of photographs at various speed settings. The images weren’t as clear as I’d expected, despite using a 2 second delayed exposure function on the camera (some residual vibration after pushing the release?)
So on 8 April I set the camera on the tripod again, but this time I connected the camera to my phone using WiFi so I could vary the exposure timing and trigger the shots remotely without camera shake. I was very happy with the results this time
Collage of moon 8 April 2020 images
Of the various exposure timings, this was about the best in giving good detail, including the craters visible on the right-hand side and the overall surface. This is a crop of about 0.38 linear from the original image.
8 April 2020 22:41 (CET) ISO 200 1/500sec f10.0 300mm (=600mm)
As a 600mm (35mm equivalent) lens has a magnification of 12x (a 50mm lens is usually regarded as having the same magnification, but not field of view, as the human eye, so is considered as 1x) this image is equivalent to a magnification of 31.6x (12/0.38).
