Tag Archives: planning

The Vicissitudes of Life, Photography and Weather

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If vicissitude is a long word, do not worry. It means:

a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

Here in California we are finally getting much-needed rain.  The drought has been more severe than when we moved here 25+ years ago. Showers and clouds are quite welcome in these parts, provided they do not block out the next great celestial event.

The next great shower is the Geminids on the night of December 13th into the morning of December 14th.  Fortunately that is a weekend, unfortunately the moon is in its last quarter so it will rise near midnight just as the shower generally becomes more intense.

Meteor in Pointy Land

How to Watch a Meteor Shower

There are many guides on what to do to SEE a meteor shower, but we can boil it down for you:

  1. Dress very warmly. A thermos of hot beverages is strongly recommended.
  2. Get in as dark a sky as possible away from sources of light pollution, streetlights, etc. Do not use a flashlight. Let your eyes dark adapt so they can see their best.
  3. Get a comfortable fully reclining chair and look STRAIGHT up.  You’ll see more meteors if you can see the entire sky. While the meteors will appear to come from the constellation Gemini they can appear anywhere in the sky.
  4. Bring a friend along and share the wonders of the heavenly fireworks with them. Besides, officially you didn’t see a meteor unless two people saw it or you got a photograph 🙂

The constellation Gemini – from which all the meteors of the shower appear to radiate rises at about 7:30 PM local time in the North East.  At that time, the Andromeda Galaxy will be almost straight above you for most people in mid-northern latitudes. By midnight, Gemini will be overhead. We recommend a Planisphere or an app if you want to identify the constellations, but to enjoy the shower you need nothing but your eyes.

Photographing a Meteor Shower

In prior articles have covered how to find a dark location and how to plan for and photograph a meteor shower.  And we even have a thorough article that explains why you probably DID NOT photograph a meteor.  We even have led expeditions to capture meteor showers in a dark location.  Unfortunately this year we have faced other vicissitudes.

You can safely skip the rest of this article if you wish…

Showers in LifeDownload link error – hopefully resolved now.

We have weathered several storms ourselves recently, and like you find ourselves wondering where all the time went.  Most recently we were reminded how difficult it can be to maintain a website and sell digital goods. An increasing number of customers complained that the digital goods they ordered could not be downloaded.  We discovered that Google was the problem! We had been using goo.gl to create short links instead of long, sometimes multi-line links for downloading content, but Google insists – for your safety – to check the contents of each of those links.  It would have been fine had this happened once or twice, but we noticed that Google US, Google Czechoslovakia, Google Japan, and Google Brazil (and others) all separately scanned the links, sometimes multiple times.  And then your virus scanner may also have downloaded and inspected the content before it would let YOU have it…  It was a lot of wasted bandwidth and irritation. We rejiggered our software to resolve the issue. Bottom line if you recently purchased content and got a “Too Many Download Attempts” message, we think it should now work if you try again. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Also, as you may know, running a website is not for the faint of heart. For example, we are seeing another increase in attacks from Chinese Comment Spam robots as well as attackers in the countries of Georgia and Germany.

On a personal matter, Steven – the primary contributor to this website – was the sole survivor of an entire team that was laid off at his day job. Steven was fettered with sole responsibility for a vast armada of servers and networks – which all fell on their knees when a 30 second power interruption wreaked havoc. He also found that there were problems with his own home network which he has been building to be able to conduct webinars again (and to thwart robocallers) … His home network is still not reliable enough, unfortunately!

Meanwhile, we are still working hard on our 2015 schedule of events.  Please bear with us.

~ Steven

 

Geometry and The Moon

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Please do not run away. We are about to use adult language here. For example we will be using the word trigonometry. Still here? Good.  Here is a very pedestrian looking lunar eclipse photo taken with a 280mm lens*, cropped.

Near and Distant Neighbors

Very Ordinary Photo of the Lunar Eclipse with the planet Uranus in the lower left.

This past lunar eclipse several of us put our heads together to try to come up with a more creative photo than the one above. We had a trigonometry problem, however. On the West Coast the last moment of totality occurred at 4:24 AM PDT. We were brave enough to be out at any time of night – even if it meant extreme sleepiness in our day jobs but our problem was that the lowest the moon would be in the sky at the last bit of totality was 32.6 degrees above the horizon. We determined that angle using Stellarium, by the way. Unfortunately there is pretty much nowhere to go to get a nice large moon near an interesting object when the moon is almost 33 degrees high.

Wait: Why do we want the moon and the object to be similarly sized? Here is why… we want the moon to be noticeable like the Fantasy version below, not merely “present” like the real photo on the right. Even bigger would be better, right!?

N_281-608714+C_281-8150

Notice above right (Reality) and below how tiny the moon is compared to the building in the foreground?  Indeed, if you see a photo taken from anywhere on the West Coast where the eclipsed moon is significantly lower in the sky or larger than shown against foreground, you know it has been “photoshopped“.

Plan C: San Jose City Hall Eclipse Sequence

In short, it is nigh impossible to get the large moon effect with an altitude (angle) of 32 degrees here is why:

Calculating the Angles

Calculating the Angles

Just how far away do we need to be in order to get the moon the same size as an object of interest:

114.6 x object size

In other words, an object that is one foot tall, requires us to stand 114.6 feet away to make the 1/2 a degree angular size of the moon the same angular size as that 1 foot tall object.  The number “114.6” is from this calculation:

1 / TAN (0.5 degrees)

Yeah, that is trigonometry. Using still more trigonometry it is possible to calculate how high above the horizon a 9 inch tall object has to be so that it is “moon sized”.  We did that for you in the “Calculating the Angles” diagram above. Once you calculate the distance from the camera of 85.9, you can multiply that by the sine of the angle to calculate a height of about 46 feet! Here is the trigonometry:

Height = 85.9′ * SIN (32 deg)

You can go one step farther and calculate the distance from the object with ‘distance = 85.9 * COS(32 deg)’.

Of course after all that calculating you will still need to find a location, have contingency plans for weather and so on. At StarCircleAcademy we have built some tools and put together materials to help in all these endeavors.  We teach these things in our NP111 Catching the Moon Webinar.

The Road To The Temple

Below is where we ended up. This image is from our friend and co-conspirator Andy Morris.

Lunar Eclipse over Temple by Andy Morris of PhotoshopScaresMe

Four of us plotted and schemed to get an interesting shot. Above is Andy Morris’ result.  Click the image and you can read a great article about how he created the shot using Photoshop Skills at his site: PhotoshopScaresMe.com. In fact, it’s a great article which we strongly encourage you to read. You’ll learn how he composited the images together in Photoshop as layers.

The Long Conversation to Pick a Location

Andy has more details including how alcohol played a part in the process. Mostly I, Steven, was the wet blanket explaining why the geometry was all wrong.

  • The Stanford (Hoover) Tower looks like it is shrouded in trees from the needed angle
  • Bank of Italy (formerly BofA) in SJC doesn’t work
  • The main problem with the wind turbines is that the angle to the top of them is something around 12 degrees above the horizon which is 40 moon diameters below the eclipse.
  • Here is why the GG Bridge doesn’t work…
  • This seems to be the best solution I could find: the Coit Tower…
  • Darn. It would appear the coast is out. Forecast calls for Fog from SF to HMB
  • This might make an interesting foreground (see below)… Somebody want to check if they will mind us being on their property in the wee hours?

*Ok, we lied, it was actually a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4 TC on a full frame camera, but the net is the same: 280 effective mm focal length.

Where did you go and what did you get in your planning efforts?  Post a comment and link below… we’d love to see what you came up with!

Plan C: How To Plan a Time Sequence Shot

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If you missed the last total lunar eclipse, don’t worry. You’ll have another chance in October, 2014. For that, I’m grateful since as you can see I had some problems with my apparatus (the CamRanger). The battery failed after the 7th shot of the moon you see below, and then it stopped working again after 3 more shots, and needed to be slayed and restarted just as the moon was transitioning to fully eclipsed.

But this column is not about our troubles, it is about how I planned for the lunar eclipse shot you see below.

Plan C: San Jose City Hall Eclipse Sequence

 

The planning began with a list of possible foreground subjects. The San Jose City Hall Rotunda was “Plan C” and the least well researched of my plans. What were plan A and B? Those were one of my favorite lighthouses and a favorite landmark in San Francisco, California. For each arrangement I had to:

  1. Calculate where to stand to make sure the moon would be in an interesting phase above the object. The plan required solving these problems
    1. Determine how high in the sky the moon would be (to know what viewing angle was best)
    2. Determine which DIRECTION I needed to face to capture the moon.
    3. Determine how “wide” a lens I needed to get the sequence I wanted.
  2. Monitor the weather at each location.

After planning all that was left was to make a last-minute decision where the most likely target would have favorable conditions and make any final on-site adjustments.  I had a Plan D, too… but it was also in San Jose so it would have only been chosen had I found some serious obstacle at the City Hall rotunda.

San Jose City Hall Panorama

Calculating the Angles

Determining the angles needed is pretty simple. I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris including all the nifty tricks we teach in our Catching the Moon Webinar. Below you can see a screen shot from the Photographer’s Ephemeris which shows the moon altitude and direction at the beginning of the eclipse. I also moved the time ahead to show the same for the middle of the eclipse.  The moon’s altitude angle (32 to 41 degrees) gave me an idea how close to be to the rotunda to get the moon overhead.  Lower angles allow me to get farther away which allows me to photograph the moon larger relative to the foreground object. This eclipse, however, and the one in October will have the moon high overhead.

Coming up with a Foreground

There is no good substitute for knowing what interesting foregrounds are possible. And also knowing which direction(s) you should be facing.  I knew that the San Jose City Hall Rotunda was generally easterly because I had watched a sun rise through it. I also knew that the eclipse would be at maximum when the moon was in the southern sky so I knew that the range was SE to S directionally.  You can see a diagram from The Photographer’s Ephemeris below for more complete planning.

Calculating Where to Stand

I had to know approximately how tall the foreground object is. For the San Jose City Hall I flat-out guessed.  I found the overall height of the building through Google, and I guess the Rotunda was 60 to 80 feet tall.   My original calculations had me much closer to the building… it was only when I got on site that I realized that there were adaptations that needed to be made.

Watching the Weather

Remember that the Rotunda was plan C.  I kept a close eye on the weather for each of the planned sites.  My favorite weather app is provided by weather.gov – in particular the hourly graphs. We talked about this tool in detail in a prior column.  Why do I like it so much? Because it gives me numbers instead of “partly cloudy”.  It was pretty obvious that the coastal region for Plan A, and the San Francisco Landmark (plan B) were likely to have bad weather – both fog and clouds. Indeed my friends who headed those directions were frustrated by poor visibility.  We had clouds passing through San Jose, but as the weather predictions had read: it got clearest right near totality, and overall was not a hindrance.

Last Minute Adaptation

When I first got to the site, I realized that the Rotunda was taller than I thought. I set up across the street in order to be able to have the moon over the Rotunda… but there were other problems, too. One of the problems is the floodlight on the top of the building. Another was a street light just to the right of where the red marker is in the graph below. These are problems that would only reveal themselves if you visit at night!

And then there are all of those flag posts.  My original guess at the Rotunda Height would have allowed me to stand between the fountain (brown area) and the building… but that clearly didn’t work as the rotunda was too high.  Setting up across the street (and very low) also had its challenges… namely buses and cars that came regularly.  I also realized that I had miscalculated the eclipse time by an hour (forgot it was now daylight savings time).  The miscalculation turned out to be a good thing as it left plenty of time to move around.  It would seem the ideal spot was in the MIDDLE of Santa Clara Street, but that wouldn’t have worked, of course.  Eventually I picked the spot with the red marker as a compromise between altitude of the moon above the structure, removing the glare from the tower lights, the wash-out of the street light, and the many flag poles in the way.

Planning Moonrise

If only my CamRanger had cooperated, I’d have had a continuous sequence of shots of the moon passing over the Rotunda.  There is always October… and maybe Plan A will work for that!

Of course that’s not ALL that was required to get the shot. I also had to composite each of the moon shots into their proper locations. I did that by first taking a panorama of the area, then making sure that when the exposures began I had a piece of the rotunda in each shot so I could properly align the moon over its actual location.  The creation of the image used the Easy HDR method we have previously described.

The Ideal Handheld App For Catching the Sun, Moon and Stars

Here at StarCircleAcademy we’ve been consuming and testing quite a number of photography related apps. So far none have risen to the promise that a handheld app could bring to the table.  Rather than illuminate what is missing from each app, here I describe what I want to DO with my handheld App.

In the Evening [5_057775+92]

  1. First, I need an app with accuracy to within 0.2 degrees! Why? Because the moon and sun are only 0.5 degrees in angular diameter. If I want to catch the moon exactly behind the Pigeon Point Lighthouse less accuracy will result in a “miss”.
    Monumental [C_038216]
  2. I want the app to accurately measure and save all the relevant data so I can reuse it and share it.  At minimum it needs to keep track of: From location, to location, altitude at the to location (degrees above horizontal), and any additional constraints like the fractional number of degrees that each measurement can vary. In some locations like the shore of a lake there is more leeway to move. In other spots, like the balcony of a building there is little leeway to move.  An ideal app would allow me to stand in two or more different spots to define that leeway.Rise and Shine [C_037951+77]If I’m solving for the moon, I’d like it to also remember the moon phase I’m interested in (usually full or slender crescent). The ability to take notes including things like height of the landmark is a big plus.
  3. Ideally I can save an image representing what I want with ALL data on the image so that if all I have is a photo, I can reconstruct the parameters in other tools or other ways.
    For example, SpyGlass shows me my GPS coordinates, the elevation, altitude and azimuth (compass direction) – though as you can see it’s calculation on where to find the moon is off by about 15 degrees (30 moon diameters) due to iPhone 4 compass inaccuracy.

    SpyGlass copy

    SpyGlass snap. Note that the plotted location of the moon is off due to iPhone compass hardware.

  4. I’d like to be able to pull up my saved locations and re-execute a search to find the next occurrence. For example, a Pigeon Point Lighthouse vista that I really like only occurs a few times a year. It’s not enough to keep track of the one event I photographed or plan to photograph.
    Project Impact [5_057573-615br]
  5. Bonus points if the data is stored in a server somewhere to make it easy to share. Extra bonus points if there is a way to have the server periodically check possible alignments and send me alerts or emails when such alignments are soon to become possible.
  6. For planning shots with the Milky Way or other prominent sky features (like the Andromeda Galaxy and the Great Orion Nebula), the app needs to accurately plot the course of those objects on an Augmented Reality frame. Images of the Milky Way presented must be realistic.  A poorly illustrated Milky Way won’t help me find the galactic center (which is what I most often want) or compare the alignment I want with the foreground I am trying to capture.
    Inflow [C_072091]
  7. For night related photography, the app must also factor in twilight and moonlight. That is, I want to be able point my device at say the Transamerica building and ask the app when (or if) the Andromeda Galaxy will appear above it when there is little or no moonlight.
  8. Make it easy to use, of course.  Most of the apps that embed maps in them are difficult to use on the tiny real estate of an iPhone – and require data connections as well.

Is it unrealistic to think a handheld app could meet these requirements?  I don’t think so. The biggest problem is overcoming the accuracy limitations in the current devices. The iPhone and iPad, for example have quite inaccurate compass readings except in perfect scenarios… but there are some clever ways (I think) to correct for that inaccuracy.  The tilt angle calculations from the on-board accelerometers and gyroscopes seem to be pretty accurate.

What We’ve Tried

  • Inclinometer. Great for measuring angles above the horizon. Even has a voice mode where it says aloud the measurement. Doesn’t do Now includes augmented reality mode so you don’t have to sight along an edge of the device. On an iPad, it seemed to be accurate to about 0.2 degrees!
  • GoSkyMap. Fun interactive sky map. You can change the date / and time and point it “at space” and it will show you great details about what is there. BUT you have to make sure you set the location correctly. Doesn’t have an Augmented Reality mode so you can’t tell how the mountain in the foreground interacts with the Milky Way, for example, but you can ask it where to find constellations and it will indicate which direction you should look.
  • Sky Map. Like GoSkyMap it’s an interactive planetarium.  I prefer to use it without the “point features”. It’s my Planosphere (Sky chart) in hand. Also includes things like Meteor Showers and radiants, a list of “what’s up tonight” showing rise and set times, moon phase, etc.  No Augmented Reality.
  • PhotoPills. Lots of things rolled into one app. Biggest complaints about this app are saving and reusing Plans, usability quirks, a grossly oversized moon or sun icon in the Augmented Reality modes and an inaccurate Milky Way representation. Oh, and I’d really like it if it would measure for me!  The planner would be great if I could have the Augmented Reality compute the Azimuth and Altitude (aka Elevation) for me, especially since it doesn’t seem to have a way to measure like the Inclinometer tool does. I see, for example where someone saved the “Manhattanhenge” event. It would be great if I could load it and click “find next occurrence”. That feature alone might be worth booking a flight to New York!
  • SpyGlass. Clever app with lots of onscreen information in Augmented Reality mode. We especially like the onscreen measurements which are saved when you grab an image.

Do you know of an app that’s highly accurate and will meet our requirements? Let’s hear about it. If it exists on an Android I’ll buy an android!