Category: stars

Physics by way of the cable company

From a whipping-up-anxiety article in Time magazine titled “Will the Earth Have Two Suns by 2012?”

Regarding Betelgeuse, a rapidly collapsing red super-giant star:


“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up,” Carter said. “We’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time…and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

And while the celestial event could take place before the end of 2012, it may not occur for a million years.


Emphasis added by me.

Sooo, it could happen in a year or a million years. Trifle hard to plan provisions for that million year stretch. What’s the half-life on my water container?

It’s only January of 2011 and I’m seriously DONE with the doomsday predictions.

Meanwhile, a star that explodes and lights up the Earth for a few weeks then fades away? That’s pretty damn cool. I kind of hope it happens by 2012.



Source.

Experiments at Night

A couple weeks back, I posted some of my first experiments with night photography, including my favorite shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This past week, while visiting New Mexico, I decided to try the next step in my night photography lessons, and that is capturing star trails.

Figuring this out required a little astrology, a little photography understanding and a LOT of knowledge about my camera.

Fortunately I had the incredibly well written book Creative Night: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques by Harold Davis (a Bay Area guy), to guide my way.

Due to the very long exposure times on night photos, a tripod is a must. Since I didn’t feel like carrying my tripod on a plane, I borrowed one from my best friend’s husband.

He uses the tripod to mount his field glasses when he goes hunting, so the tripod head had been…uh…modified. I think “modified” is the best way to describe the carnage that had occurred to the tripod head.

In order for me to use the device, he had to pound out the ten-penny nail wedged in there to help stabilize his field glasses. He also had to find the right sized wrench so I could tighten the bolt that holds the camera in place.

And even then, the camera would suddenly droop but thankfully didn’t drop.

Despite my less than super high tech borrowed tripod, I was able to make it work and was grateful for the borrowed gear.

I took a few photos that night and learned a whole lot about the process. Like, did you know a full moon is so bright it will wash out an exposure? I didn’t…until a few nights ago.

The most exciting of the photos from that night is below. It’s not well composed at ALL because it has nothing in the foreground to provide a sense of perspective.

What this photo DOES prove is that I have figured out how to take photographs of star trails. This was an eight-minute exposure. A longer exposure will net longer star trails.

I’m incredibly excited about this new knowledge!

Onward to the stars!

My First Star Trail
(click the photo here then click the photo again in Flickr to see larger sizes, if interested)