During a telescope meeting in mid June 2018, set in the Austrian mountains I created the following two hyperlapses. The milky-way including some clouds passing over is a fantastic view. The transition from night to the first light of the morning sun is non the less a pleasure!
A Sardegna day to night to day timelapse (aka The Holy Grail of Timelapses)
Actually, I shot the footage of this timelapse more than 3 years ago. Though I kindof “lost” the images on my backup storage and forgot about it. A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon the files…
I sent a few days at a farm in northern Sardegna, Italy during a late August full moon. The terrace of the main building offered this splendid veiw of the countryside and pigs enclosure (you may see a few pigs running around at the end of the video). The full moon cast a shadow all night long, while the stars pass around Polaris.
The timelapse was shot between 19:44 and 08:53, covering 13 hours with 777 single exposures.
Post processing in Lightroom and LRTimelapse
My astrophotography (Comet 46/P Wirtanen) session in local news
My saturday night astrophotography session (see last post) got some attention in local news. Two folks from Kleine Zeitung accomanied me and a friend to the observing location. They created a video report, showing us freezing the ***** off for a nice photo.
Kudos to the journalists, as they endured the -10° until 2:30am!
View video here…
Hint: Video is in german language
Comet 46/P Wirtanen with M45 (Pleiades)
This weekend is the perfect viewing opportunity for Comet 46/P Wirtanen:
First, the comet is closest to eart by less than 0.08 astronomical units (distance from earth to the sun), which is approximately 30 times the distance to moon!
Second, the comet passes very close to the open cluster M45 – the Pleiades.
And third, it is still an early moon phase. This means that from midnight on, the night will be really dark!
I was eagerly waiting for this view. Though current weather conditions in central Europe did not promise anything suitable for observations until 2-3 days ago. Saturday night showed increasing patches of open skies…
Finally, Saturday in the late afternoon, the sky cleared up. So all was a go for observing!
At -11°C conditions were cold but good for astro photography. Recent precipitation left some humidity in the air, reducing air transparency a bit. What caused some trouble was, a frost cover building up on all the equipment (photos will follow)…
Here are the results of a loooong night up in the mountains:
Comet 46/P Wirtanen travelling through space
The following timelapses show, how much angular distance the comet 46/P Wirtanen makes, when closest to earth. From my data I see approximately a stunning 1° during 4 hours!
Timelapse 1:
85mm photo lens with 1.5x crop sensor
93 exposures, each 60 seconds long (93 min total)
Timelapse 2:
200mm photo lens with full frame sensor
160 exposures, each 90 seconds long (240 min total)
Timelapse 3:
715mm/f7 APO with 1.5x crop sensor
71 exposures, 30 and 60 seconds over 80 min
2018-12-08 Comet 46/P Wirtanen comes closer
After several days with clouds, there has finally been a window of a few hours with stars visible. Unfortunately I had no chance to reach acceptable dark skies. So I had to deal with a more or less 5.5mag sky and some clouds passing by in eastern Austria. This image shows a bit more detail of Comet 46/P Wirtanen, as I used a 200mm telephoto lens. The result is not yet the image I am looking for. So I hope that clouds will clear up the next days for a better and longer imaging session…
2018-11-28 Comet 46/P Wirtanen
Finally the full moon is over. The first chance to properly see some fainter objects like the comet 46/P Wirtanen. Comet 46/P Wirtanen started to rise more and more from the horizon. At November 10 the comet reached only 10° above the horizon. Now it is at approximately 20°. As for one day on November 28 the sticky clouds opened up above Austria. So I packed my gear and headed to the mountains. I ended up at a snow covered mountain top near Lachtal at 1857m a.s.l. At -8°C seeing, transparency and sky darknes were exceptionally! A really treat to observe 🙂
I set up my camera with a 85mm lens and captured 90 minutes of data until the moon rose. I chose the 85mm as I expected to see a tail extending from the comet. But as it seems, the tail is not extening sideways (seen from Earth) at the moment.
I am really pleased with the results and hope for another chance of good weather within the next few days…
Autumn in Styria @ Klapotetzstrasse
The southern parts of Austria, along the border to Slovenia, are known for its wine. The wine is grown on the slopes of nearly every hill. To prevent birds from feasting excessively on the wine, farmers installed huge versions of noise making ratchets, called Klapotetz. These devices, the largest are up to 16 meters in height, reach back at least to the 18th century. They are found especially dense around the Klapotetzstrasse.
It is a really wonderful reagion to spend some time. In autumn, when colours are rich, seems to be the best time to be there…
2018-11-10 Milky way above the observatory – slider movie
I went to the observatory (see previous post) to capturing some deep sky photos. When the camera was capturing in the meantime I set up my slider. The slider was configured to travel an inclined track with 6m length. The plan was to show the milky way above the observatory, travelling away from the dome.
This is the 3 hour hyperlapse:
First glimpse of Comet 46/P Wirtanen
I was eagerly waiting for the first chance to see the promising comet 46/P Wirtanen. As I was scheduled for a public viewing session at the local observatory, I set up my camera on the 50cm telescope after the last visitor left. Before slewing to the comet (which was still extremely low above the horizon), I wanted to try a few night time jewels: M27 (Dumbbell Nebula), core of M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) and M57 (Ring Nebula).
Afterwards I slewed the telescope to comet 46/P Wirtanen. The comet had risen to 10°. Weather was quite OK, but that low, there is a lot of bright haze. Visually I had no chance to see anything. So I tried to take a few shots and see, if I could process the results…
Well… unfortunately there is something mis-configured as I endet up with really huge stars in the range of 12 arcseconds. So there is not that much detail within the pictures as I would have expected. The comet is there and looks promising. But from the observatory location, it has to rise significantly above the horizon…
Here are the results:
