Sunfish Sailing Worlds

The Sunfish world championships are being held here on Bonaire next week. One can even buy one of the boats complete with accessories and a special Bonaire flag sail at the end of the event.

Sunday Green Flash

For an observer just north of Hato, the Space Station sailed right across the Moon at 7:25 this morning, but I didn't see it due to haze and clouds, grrr.   I've tried to image this a couple times and failed, but I did observe it once, back in the day.  But, on the other hand, there was a nice green flash tonight!  You'll want to watch the video clip full screen.

When the Sun is about to touch the horizon, a sort of red false sun rises up to meet it.  This is called an inferior mirage.  While the atmospheric refraction is indeed splitting the sun into different colors like a prism, one needs the inferior mirage to amplify the effect so we can see it easily.

When I see the red false sun come up from the horizon to meet the setting sun, I can be pretty sure I'll see a green flash.

During the second half of the video, there are a couple bits of green that peel off from the top of the sun.  That is caused by an inferior mirage too, I believe.

Oh, and I'm going to try to borrow better tripod to see if it would help reduce all the wind induced jiggling in the videos.

Sunset at the Huts

We did some group stargazing at Red Slave Sunday night. I got there early, in case there would be a green flash, but it was pretty cloudy and hazy, as can be seen in the photos. 

But the sky overhead was very clear and we all had a great time. 

Bud Gillan and I stayed late and observed Neptune and Uranus with my 20x80 binoculars.

Moon and Towers

There was a skinny moon Friday night. I zoomed out to the TWR transmitter site to see what i could see.

Milky Way at TWR TX site

Here are a couple shot of the Milky Way over the TWR towers. 

I'm going to need to remember to try to shoot this a month or two earlier in the year, to get the Milky Way where I want it to be.

(weather permitting of course)

More starry nights

The New Moon is tonight.  That means no moon to us stargazers.
 
We've had some clear skies again this week. Sandra's cousin, Bud Gillan, and I zoomed down South to check out the stars.

I also shot a few quickie images to remember it by.

The sky glow from Venezuela was much brighter than usual that night. 

I read later that two different meteor showers peaked that night, but we didn't see a single meteor over a three plus hour time span. 

It was pretty dark out. I couldn't even begin to see the huts when I was standing by the obelisk. The camera collected a lot more photons during the a ten second exposures.

My Favorite Milky Way shot

I like this one the best, although the one in my previous post is a close second.

Milky Way with lighter Foreground

 

Another shot from the July 7 expedition to Rooi Limoenchi.

Rooi Limoenchi Milky Way Series

I've been posting one Milky Way shot per day on Facebook. 

Here is a collected set so far. Two more to go after these.

I'm still tweaking some of them in preparation for printing.

 

Greeen Flash Surprise

We had a nice Milky Way gazing session last night (July 19) from 8pm until 9:30 or so, when the Moon came up. 
Earlier, the Sun had dropped down into the murk without any green action.
The day before, Thursday, didn't look promising, with clouds drifting along the horizon, but the Sun actually ended up showing a good bit of green. I like this one a lot.

Milky Way Panorama

Here is another image from my photo adventure at Rooi Lamoenchi on July 5.  It is a panorama made from four frames.
At the left side, towards the top of the frame is Vega, in the constellation Lyra. 
About a quarter of the way from left to right, and in the middle from top to bottom is Altair, in the constellation Aquilla. 
Right in the middle of the frame from top to bottom and from left to right is Saturn. 
Up near the top of the frame and about three quarters of the way from left to right is Jupiter and the red star Antares, in the constellation Scorpius. 
At the extreme lower right corner of the frame is the Southern Cross.  I'm not sure what Blogger is going to do to this image.  The original is 2959x1080 pixels.

Southern Cross Series

The International Bible Church had a kids camp at Kunuku Rooi Lamoenchi a couple weeks ago. We were all invited to the opening event. I took advantage of that to get some night time sky shots. 

I've got lots of pictures of the milky way with slave huts or light houses in the foreground. This was a chance for something different. I took lots of pictures, which I'll share over the next days, as i finish processing them. 

Here are three shots of the Southern Cross as the night grew darker. The S Cross is in the middle of the square picture that I shot first. 

The next one is a bit later and shows more stars. I drew lines showing the SCross on a copy of this shot to help you spot it, and labeled the bright stars Alpha and Beta Centaurus, as well as the globular cluster Omega Centauri. 

The last picture is from when it was completely dark and shows the most stars. You'll need to view these full size to see the stars.

Friday Green Flash

The green flash Friday evening was a "10." My experience is that the really bright green flashes don't photograph too well. It has me thinking about a neutral density filter. Watch the bottom of the sun's disk as it approaches the water. My experience is that when it kind of pours into the water like it did tonight, the green flash will be a good one visually, but not in the recording.

Moon and Jupiter

The Moon and Jupiter were close together Saturday evening.  The moon will be next to Saturn on Monday evening.

I tried out the Nikon Coolpix P1000 on the Moon and Jupiter tonight. Its zoom lens extends to the equivalent of a 3000mm lens on a full size camera. 

There were three moons of Jupiter visible when we started and then a fourth one popped into view. According to Sky and Telescope, it was Io. If I had been using a telescope, I would have been able to see Io's shadow on Jupiter's disk.

Sun, Moon, and Planet gazing

I saw a green flash yesterday evening. It wasn't a great one, but I was happy to see it at all. 

Then we had a moon and planet gazing session at the TWR transmitter site. Moon glare drowned out most of the stars, but Jupiter and Saturn looked good. You can see a star or two in the pictures. 

The Moon will be quite close to Jupiter tonight and then close to Saturn on Monday night. They should be even be visible in urban areas if it is not cloudy.

Milky Way Stitched Pano

This panorama is from the first set of images that I shot the other night.  It is made up from four rows by five columns.  I wasn't sure if I would be able to stitch it together, so I also shot the simpler two rows by 5 columns pano that I posted a day or two ago.
This one did turn out to be tricky to stitch together, but it is looking pretty good at this point.  The view of the constellations is the same as the previous pano, but this shot extends higher up into the sky, and I was closer to the huts.
Aquilla is at the left end of the Milky Way, and the Southern Cross with the dark Coal Sack nebula is at the right end of the Milky Way.

 

The pano is made from 21 images.  Each image is a stack of 9 frames for a total of 189 exposures.  The individual exposures were shot with a 35mm lens.  Each exposure was six seconds long, at f1.4 and IS0 6400.  I downsized this for posting online, but the original has enough pixels in it to print 25 by 43.5 inches at 300 dots per inch.  I'm not sure if I'll ever print it that big.  It is a little grainy and there is some chromatic aberration on the brighter stars.  I'll definitely print it myself at 13x19" though.
Hmmm, i just noticed some extra stars lurking in there. There are two Saturns, and a second bottom pair of the Teapot's handle. Will have to check that out...

Milky Way panorama

Did some stargazing the other night. It was the first clear, moonless night in months. I shot about 600 pictures from 8pm to 9:30. This panorama is made from two rows of images. Four frames on the first row and five frames on the second row. Each of those nine frames consists of nine stacked images-to cut down on the grain. So about 81 shots in all. It would print out two feet by three feet at 240 dpi. I have another batch of 500 or so frames that i hope to combine into a larger panorama.

A Tale of Two Airports

I flew to the States a few weeks ago for some meetings.  Flamingo Airport was busy busy busy, with United-Newark, Delta-Atlanta and American Airlines-Miami planes all there at the same time. United and Delta fly on weekends.  American has some midweek flights too.

Then the sky was super clear when I got to New Jersey.  Here is what I saw looking over at Manhattan as we approached Newark's Liberty Airport.