Another Time Lapse Astro Video

While I was busily setting up and polar aligning my telescope mount down south on Bonaire the other night, I also had a camera on a tripod pointed South and shooting lots of 20 second exposures of the sky. I combined the images into a 25 second video clip. It plays back a little darker on YouTube than I had expected, so I'll have to work on that for next time. I have an idea what went wrong.

I hope to have this time lapse video creation thing relatively perfected by this summer when the Milky Way puts on a great show. I'll keep playing with these images to see if I can enhance the video's appearance. I shot RAW frames the other night, JPEGS this time. So far, the post processing of the RAW frames is proving easier for me.

You can see the Large Magellanic Cloud in this clip, but it isn't very bright. There are a couple of orange clouds along the horizon in the middle of the image. The LMC is a bit to the upper right of these glowing clouds. The LMC gets easier to see towards the end of the image as it gets above the cloud bands. (like from the 18 second point until the end of the clip) The LMC is a ghostly white color.

If you watch the top edge of the frame right near the beginning of the clip, you'll see an Iridium satellite flare. It is pretty bright, but brief, moving from the top edge of the clip in a downward direction. Cal-Sky predicted the flare and I was pleased that I was able to capture it. There are a number of other satellite passes in the clip I think. The last one that is down low and goes from left to right is almost certainly an airplane. We see lots of planes on that particular path.

For some reason, when I imbed the clip here in the blog, half of it gets cut off. (might be a different aspect ration than my previous clip) Anyway, you'll need to watch the clip on YouTube. You can follow this link. I like it best in 480p and in the medium size. The default size is pretty small, and full screen version gets kind of grainy.

Oh, those bright lights along the horizon at the end of the clip are boats. :)