Padfield

[Padfield]

I always enjoy night sky photos and took the opportunity to take a few while down near the equator. I particularly liked those you showed earlier of the planetary conjunction.

As you wrote, a lot is in the processing but I would add to always use the widest possible aperture on the camera, set a high ISO, and use a fairly wide angle lens. Unless you have a sophisticated mount, the earth's rotation will blur the star images with exposures of only just a few seconds, of you try to zoom in too much!

For processing, I start by using the 'levels' control to cut out all the grey tones and make the background 'black' - this is why high-ISO noise doesn't matter, because you remove it anyway. Then I use the brightness and contrast controls to get as many stars visible as possible, without noise starting to appear.

Mike

I agree in principle with all this, Mike. In practice, for some reason, my present camera will not allow an ISO bigger than 100 for exposures longer than a second. So, for bright celestial objects I jack it right up to 3200 and keep the exposure short; but for constellations, where faint stars need to be brought out and a longer exposure is needed (so the dimmest ones are distinguishable from noise) I'm stuck with ISO 100. Fortunately, the low ISO means the resulting image can be massively enhanced without the noise going through the roof.

Scenic shots, of course, need some grayscale, as do shots of nebulosity. Enhancements that bring out stars beautifully risk losing the contrast between the mountains (or other setting) and the sky. They also turn the Andromeda Galaxy into an increasingly small spot - so compromise is necessary.

I'll never get brilliant results with a cheap, small-sensor camera, but my aim is only to do the best I can with the equipment I have.

Guy

[MikeOxon]

I'll never get brilliant results with a cheap, small-sensor camera, but my aim is only to do the best I can with the equipment I have.

indeed... and you demonstrate what interesting results can be obtained from such a camera

[David M]

I'll never get brilliant results with a cheap, small-sensor camera, but my aim is only to do the best I can with the equipment I have.

Guy, those results ARE brilliant given the camera you're using. I've experimented with night sky shots myself but have yet to take one worthy of posting so you must be doing something right.

[Padfield]

Thanks, Mike and David. I appreciate your comments. I should add that I didn't mean to downplay the camera - I chose it carefully and am very pleased with it. I only meant that it has a small sensor and is certainly much cheaper than the DSLRs I know many on these forums use. The biggest downsides I can see with a small sensor are the lack of dynamic range and the higher levels of noise at high ISO. The upsides are flexibility and, in the case of this camera, the zoom.

Here's last night's setting moon:



Guy

[Cotswold Cockney]

Always good to see the Moon like that.

Got up about 4 am last night ~ had a big mug of tea before retiring ~ and looked out of the curtains to observe a clear, cloudless sky. Only two bright sources of light visible in the Eastern and Southern sky. Assume Venus and Jupiter ... unless others know different.

My son has an app. on his phone which identifies bodies in the night sky simply by pointing it at them ... He works away during the week.

Me? What's an app. ? ,,, My old steam driven mobile phone may as well have come out of the Ark. Simply does what it says on the tin ... communicates.

Actually, most modern phones are steam driven. Every time their batteries are recharged ... the steam driven turbines in the Nation's Power Stations see to that.

[Jack Harrison]

You wrote Guy:

The biggest downsides I can see with a small sensor are the lack of dynamic range and the higher levels of noise at high ISO. The upsides are flexibility and, in the case of this camera, the zoom.

I totally agree.

I recently bought a Sony a6000 with an APS sensor (24 x 16 mms). Its dynamic range is superb: apparently lost shadows or blown highlights are often recoverable. The a6000 is a very small camera and so far I only have one lens (25 to 75 mm equivalent). I am reluctant to have to cart around a bag full of extra lenses. The a6000 is an ideal camera for landscape and similar photography, but my trusty old Panasonic FZ150 is not being withdrawn from service being a very useful, flexible piece of kit. I also have a tiny pocket size Panasonic DMC SZ1 which I take with me everywhere.

And info for CC. Yes, in morning sky at the moment (will change), Venus is the very bright one, Jupiter above and to the right, Mars much fainter in between.

Jack

[Padfield]

Thanks for he observations, CC and Jack.

I've had very little spare time on my hands recently, but in any case the sudden onset of winter has removed any opportunities for observing leps. Even the early stages are happily buried beneath thick snow.

As I came home from a late lesson last night, at about 21h30, I was awestruck by the beauty of the night, illuminated through cloud by a nearly full moon. As soon as I got home I grabbed my camera (and Minnie) and we went back out to take a few shots of it. They don't do justice to the magic but catch the general idea:







Here is a similar view this morning:



As I walked home from school today I noticed a different phenomenon - the arrival of the (alpine) choughs in town. Here are a few sheltering from the snow under the eaves of a chalet:



These shots are from Minnie's lunchtime walk:





Proper winter!

Guy

[David M]

Stunning, Guy. I always find there's an unusual sense of calm once snow has fallen. Maybe it's because people are forced to take their time over things.

I hope we can have a decent cold snap this winter. The last couple have been unhelpfully mild.

[essexbuzzard]

I've often seen the alpine choughs on my trips to Europe,but never sheltering on a wall like that-what a strange,interesting observation!

[Matsukaze]

One of my earliest memories is of seeing alpine choughs at the tops of the Swiss mountains in 1976, when I was not that much larger than the birds. I have only seen them once since, in the somewhat incongruous setting of Ronda in southern Spain.

[Wurzel]

Interesting behaviour exhibited by the Alpine Choughs Guy. It's a good job Minnie has dark ears otherwise you'd lose her in the snow!

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Pete Eeles]

Stunning photos, Guy - I always feel that a snow-filled landscape feels quite "magical" (I'm not quite sure how else to describe it) and your images really capture that feeling. Just beautiful

Cheers,

- Pete

[Jack Harrison]

I too just love the night shots. Couldn't see any EXIF data. Exposure, aperture, etc please Guy.

How is the progress on becoming a a Swiss National?

Jack

[Padfield]

Thank you all for your comments. Yes, it was interesting to see the choughs on the wall like that - which is why I pulled out my phone and took a shot. I'm not sure if I've seen it before - we get very used to these birds over the winter. In summer they live in the high mountains but with the first real snowfalls they come down to towns and villages, as well as hanging round mountain huts, chalets and refuges where there are picnic pickings to be had. On sunny days they catch valley thermals and rise in great spiralling clouds into the air.

And yes, the winter views are magical - but also very cold. I have no heating in my chalet, meaning iPhones and iPads will not charge overnight (they don't charge or operate properly below 0°C) and the dog's water is often frozen in the morning. In the daytime I have a movable radiator on but I turn this off at night.

The exif info is all there in the pictures, Jack - I just extracted it to check (using Opanda iexif 2 - http://opanda.com/en/iexif/). Those nighttime ones in my last post were 15" exposure, F3.4, ISO 100, exposure bias +1, cropped and white-adjusted with Picasa, then resized and finished in Paint.net (both free programmes).

Oh - and yes, I now have two passports, a British one and a Swiss one. Could come in handy ... It took a lot of time and bureaucracy but in the end I took the oath and was formally pronounced Swiss.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

...I took the oath and was formally pronounced Swiss.

Congratulations Guy.

Thanks for the photo data.

Jack

[Padfield]

Congratulations Guy.

Thanks, Jack.

Back to lep matters, I had a chance today, for the first time in ages, to go down to the woods and see what was going on there.

A single leaf dangled by a thread on Gautama's sallow:



It is his seat leaf, that he vacated at the beginning of November to go off and hibernate. These photos show why it is still hanging in there:





Gautama did a good job of securing it. At this time of year, before snow and wind strips even these leaves off the trees, dangling seat leaves are said to be a good way of locating iris cats. I've yet to find a single one that way, but I might try looking for more leaves tomorrow.

I haven't found Gautama yet, since he hibernated. Back at the beginning of November I thought I would wait until the tree was bare to search systematically. Today it was too cold, though, for Minnie to hang around while I searched. I'm sure he's there somewhere.

Minnie in her hoodie:



Guy

[Cotswold Cockney]

>>> but in the end I took the oath and was formally pronounced Swiss. <<<

Guy

Now you qualify to invent something useful .... like a knife or a clock. ....

By the way, keep those night sky and snowy woodland pictures coming. Always a delight to my old minces ...

Those hanging old iris larvae seat leaves are always a dead giveaway. In the sheltered depths deep inside southern broadleaf UK woodlands protected from any strong winds, they can remain in place until the spring.

When I cleaned up my potted Sallows in the winter, I'd remove those seat leaves and then you can feel just how securely they are fixed to the twigs. Some needing quite a tug. Numerous strands of silk laid down every time these larvae depart and return from feeding.

[Jack Harrison]

Now you qualify to invent something useful .... like a knife or a clock. ....

And somehow to keep out of every man-made conflict. I admire you people.

But I must ask: do you have the equivalent of a Blair or a Corbyn or a Thatcher? Or even a - it's hard to type this word - a Dubya?

Jack

[Padfield]

Thanks again for the comments, CC and Jack. I'd like to answer your political question, Jack, but time is not on my side ...

I was going to work all day today but it was so sunny I felt it would be irresponsible if I didn't nip to the valley and check if any Queens were flying. The weather was perfect - still, warm air, building up into nice hotspots. I visited all the sites I know where Queens sometimes fly into December and saw none, concluding that they have now gone to bed. Here is a typical spot, where I usually see my last Queen of the year:



I quite literally had to run round the sites, as I was so pushed for time (and still am, as I write! ) but it didn't really matter as the only species on the wing was clouded yellow, of which I saw half a dozen. Here is one of them, to brighten the day:



This may or may not be my last butterfly photo of the year. The weather seems entirely unpredictable at the moment.

Guy

[David M]

I feel I know that spot myself, Guy, having seen it in your diary so many times!

No Queens was disappointing, but half a dozen Cloudies is enough to brighten anyone's day!