Wednesday 13 June 2018

Three Views of the Milky Way

Three views of the Milky Way, shot over two nights in the Mojave Desert, California.

1. Still photo



Move your cursor over the image (or touch on mobile) to see labels: constellations are in blue and planets are in pink. Click on the image for a high-res version, where you can make out some of the amazing deep-sky objects in Sagittarius, including star clusters and nebulae (interstellar clouds of dust and gas hundreds of light years wide, where new stars are being born). Though it cannot be seen in the photo, the frame also includes the galactic centre – the theorised location of a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*.

2. Star trails



These star trails were shot over 65 minutes. I like how it really brings out the variation in star colours. The stars moved from left to right, and the brightest streak is Jupiter.

3. Timelapse



The video above opens in a new window (I recommend setting the quality to 1080p as YouTube sometimes picks a lower resolution). 2.5 hours of diurnal motion are compressed into 20 seconds: an effective speed of 450x. The "star" rising around 0:08 is Mars. The sky lighting up at the end of the video is not daybreak, but the Moon rising in the east.

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Saturday 9 June 2018

Seasons 8: San Francisco Bay Area

I was in the Bay Area for two months, which might seem like too little time for the kind of dramatic variation that makes for a good Seasons post. 'Precocious' plants, which flower before leaves appear, offer a way out.

I often used to sit and work under this wisteria. Sometimes I would go inside to make myself a cup of coffee, and when I came back there would be wisteria petals on my laptop. Move your cursor over the image (or touch on mobile) to see how it changed in little over a month.



Base photo:27 April 2018
Mouseover photo:31 May 2018
Approx. coordinates:37.90°N, 122.29°W