Some of my Photos of Space

L. Spiro · 2013-02-10T16:48:26

My interest in joining Mars One has caused my childhood interest in the universe to resurface (off-topic, but “Last auto saved: 11:55:44 AM”—it’s all in the wrist). As with almost anything, knowledge frequently comes with reading rather than hands-on research, but I always need some element of hands-on…ed…ness… …to keep things interesting. It is difficult to touch stellar objects, especially the sun, so I settled for taking photographs of them. Of course you can download pictures of the planets, moon, and sun anywhere (well, not literally), but the interactive element is what makes the images fun. So these are all images that I took myself from my room in Tokyo, Japan, Earth. I hope you enjoy my amateur photography. [attachment=13549:Sun1.png] This is the sun. The sun is too bright to photograph during the day so I took this shot close to midnight when the sun is darkest. Ho ho ho, you see, I kid. This was taken during the day, but from Japan, which is the land of the rising sun, which is a different and darker sun than yours. Ho ho ho, you see, I jest. I used ultra-dark filters to put the brightness of the sun into a reasonable range for photography, shutter speed 1/320, F8.0, and ISO 80. Year 2,013 marks the 11th year of the solar cycle, which is its peak. Solar flares are emitted from sunspots, a few of which are visible here. Just days before I took this, the gigantic sunspot AR1654 was pointing like a cannon directly at Earth, but luckily did not fire. We did however get a direct hit from a solar flare in January, though no one seemed to notice. For comparison, the black part of the main sunpot is about 1.3 or so times larger than Earth, and some of the flames coming off the photosphere of the sun, especially in the upper-right, are about as tall as the diameter of Earth. [attachment=13550:Moon6.png] This is the most recent fool moon. Ho ho ho, I jest—it was actually a very clever full moon. This was shot as it was rising just after sunset and low on the horizon, giving it a yellowish tint. Tip to all who photograph space, shoot things when they are directly overhead. The more atmosphere between you and the target, the less clear and more tinted the photo will be. I wanted to wait for this one to rise over me for the shot, but I had to go to bed. [attachment=13551:Moon5.png] This was taken the night before while the moon was overhead. Not a completely foolish moon, but the jagged outline and craters are much more visible. [attachment=13552:Moon4.png] This first-quarter moon shows the craters much better. [attachment=13553:Jupiter0.jpg] This is Jupitar. With normal brightness (left) you can easily see its main 4 moons. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, is larger than Mercury! With brightness reduced (right) the surface features of Jupiter start to appear. Unfortunately this was a low-horizon shot, which means it could be a lot clearer. I will try to get one while it is overhead soon and will post if the clarity is noticeably better. This was not digitally scaled—it is the same zoom/scale as the sun and earth shots (although the site might have rescaled those images). [attachment=13554:Saturn0.png] Saturn is also fairly easy to spot with the naked eye. With good eyesight you can see her rings without any equipment. The upper-left square is the non-scaled (same zoom/scale as all previous images) image and the middle is digitally scaled by 4 times. [attachment=13555:Venus0.png] Venus, you sneaky girl! Trying to hide between layers of clouds eh? Venus is an inferior planet, meaning it is always in the direction of the sun when viewed from Earth. This means it is only easily visible during sunrise and sunset normally, but it is so bright that it can be seen during clear days and is sometimes mistaken for a UFO. If there is some interest, more might follow. L. Spiro

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Started by L. Spiro February 09, 2013 03:30 AM

12 comments, last by slicer4ever 11 years, 9 months ago

swiftcoder

18,997

February 09, 2013 05:21 PM

Yay, space pics.

QFT

Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]

HappyCoder

5,076

February 09, 2013 09:10 PM

That is really cool. I have recently gotten some equipment for my telescope but unfortunately where I live the weather has been cloudy and I haven't had a good chance to use them yet. I have really been wanting to see Saturn but haven't justified waking early, or staying up very late, to see it.

It is incredible how hard it is to get a good picture of objects in space. Nice work.

My current game project Platform RPG

L. Spiro

Author

25,818

February 10, 2013 09:55 AM

Finally had a clear night.

As soon as the sun set, Jupiter was directly above, and as I had mentioned before you need to minimize the atmosphere between you and the target, so this was the best time to get a better shot of Jupiter.

[attachment=13567:Jupiter1.png]

With it being directly above, the surface features are much clearer. Image not digitally scaled.

I tried to get Mars and Mercury but was unable. They would have been low to the horizon anyway so not very clear.

But as a constellation prize (get it??), after I snapped my shots of Jupiter I decided to turn around and take a picture of the location where I took this shot.

[attachment=13568:SkyTree2.png]

I took my shot of Jupiter on the walkways along the side of this river with the Tokyo Skytree towering behind me. This is just outside my room and is an open area good for shooting the stars.

Not a space picture but nifty enough I thought I would share since that is where I took the Jupiter photo.

Also while I was kneeling down on the walkway an Indian kid and his dad walked up and the Indian kid saw my camera pointing straight up and stopped and looked up.

He said, “Look daddy you can see the stars.”

The dad looked up and then at me and I said, “That’s Jupiter.”

He replied, “The big one?”

“Yep,” I confirmed.

People often don’t realize that the brightest things up there are not stars but planets, and it is nice to hear their surprise and a bit of wonder as they realize they are looking at our largest planet rather than another star of trillions.

L. Spiro

I restore Nintendo 64 video-game OST’s into HD! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtX_wedtZ5BoyQBXEhnVZw/playlists?view=1&sort=lad&flow=grid