Thursday, June 23, 2005
Venus and Mercury and Saturn, Oh My!
The bucketing rain has stopped (well for Adelaide, 53 mm is bucketing down, in my birthtown of Brisbane 53 mm is a light shower), the clouds have parted, and I have got my first view of the massing of Venus, Mercury and Saturn. I did a few quick shots of them with my Olympus digital camera on the way home from work. and the results is presented below. It looks somewhat darker on the web than it does in Paintshop. Mercury is at the bottom, Venus in the middle (of course) and Saturn up the top.
Mercury, Venus and Saturn will continue to get closer together over the next few days. On the 26th they will be in a circle 1.2 degrees across, and on the 27th Mercury and Venus will be visible together in a telescope. This degree of closeness is rather rare.
Of course, the 27th will be the Bettdeckererschnappender Wiesle's birthday, so I guess I won't be doing any astrophotography that night (Why is it all the really interesting phenomena that aren't covered by cloud occur during partners birthdays, or kids mealtimes or their bath times?).
Anyway, back to exam marking.
Mercury, Venus and Saturn will continue to get closer together over the next few days. On the 26th they will be in a circle 1.2 degrees across, and on the 27th Mercury and Venus will be visible together in a telescope. This degree of closeness is rather rare.
Of course, the 27th will be the Bettdeckererschnappender Wiesle's birthday, so I guess I won't be doing any astrophotography that night (Why is it all the really interesting phenomena that aren't covered by cloud occur during partners birthdays, or kids mealtimes or their bath times?).
Anyway, back to exam marking.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:45 pm 
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Thanks, Ian -- I *thought* there was something unusual about that lineup when I saw it the other night! Nice photo, I'm wildly jealous of your camera...
And the lineup will only get better (Hughie permitting).
I'm jelaous of my camera. I won my camera at the Australian Neuroscience Society meeting in a sort of raffle. It's the first time I've won anything since 1971 (when I won a small alarm clock, this was back in the days when clocks still cost real money).
I'm still trying to work out how to use it, the shot on this page is 0ne of 3 taken with identical settings, but the other two turned out much darker. Who knows why?
Another clue is, when doing astrophtography, ALLWAYS wear you glasses to ensure you are in the right mode.
I'm jelaous of my camera. I won my camera at the Australian Neuroscience Society meeting in a sort of raffle. It's the first time I've won anything since 1971 (when I won a small alarm clock, this was back in the days when clocks still cost real money).
I'm still trying to work out how to use it, the shot on this page is 0ne of 3 taken with identical settings, but the other two turned out much darker. Who knows why?
Another clue is, when doing astrophtography, ALLWAYS wear you glasses to ensure you are in the right mode.
Fantastic photo. I'm just speculating about why the other two may have turned out darker, even though the settings were identical. Do you have full manual control or is the camera automatic or partially automatic?
If automatic, the problem may be that the camera changed settings without you knowing it.
In this photo, you have about 10 to 15% ground and the rest sky. The lightmeter will 'average' the light reading. In this case it did a good job.
If you another photo with 100% sky, then it may actually automatically close itself down one stop, and thus come out darker.
If, that is the reason, then you have to work out a way to fool it, or see if you can otherwise manually over-ride.
If automatic, the problem may be that the camera changed settings without you knowing it.
In this photo, you have about 10 to 15% ground and the rest sky. The lightmeter will 'average' the light reading. In this case it did a good job.
If you another photo with 100% sky, then it may actually automatically close itself down one stop, and thus come out darker.
If, that is the reason, then you have to work out a way to fool it, or see if you can otherwise manually over-ride.
# posted by 
: 12:17 pm
: 12:17 pm
The Olympus µ[mju:] 300 is fully automatic. If it has a manual exposure over-ride, I haven't found it. But I've only read the paper manual, not the full bells and whistles PDF.
I took all the pictures on a tripod (why did I have a tripod, for taking pictures through the microscope at work-getting focus is a royal pain). S0 there was no movement between shots. But I think I have worked out what happened.
All pictures were set up as "night scenes" on the menu. But the two darkish ones were just snapped manually, and the lighter ones were shot using the timer (to reduce vibration). There is also the factor that the sunset was rapidly fading, but it looks like setting the camera onto timer gives a longer exposure for some reason.
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I took all the pictures on a tripod (why did I have a tripod, for taking pictures through the microscope at work-getting focus is a royal pain). S0 there was no movement between shots. But I think I have worked out what happened.
All pictures were set up as "night scenes" on the menu. But the two darkish ones were just snapped manually, and the lighter ones were shot using the timer (to reduce vibration). There is also the factor that the sunset was rapidly fading, but it looks like setting the camera onto timer gives a longer exposure for some reason.
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