Category Archives: Skies and Stars

Blockhead photographs blockhouse

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I like hiking up to the blockhouses at sunset. I don’t like hiking back in the dark so much. I got a great view of the evening sky in between, though! I got there too late to capture the sunrise, and there were clouds moving in from the northwest AGAIN…but there were some shadowy rays tracing off into the darkness as I began to head down the hill, so I did not come back empty-handed.

Moon over my capitol

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On my way home from an already successful photo jaunt, I noticed that the moon was about to set in a most convenient location. I bolted to the one spot in Bismarck which allows such a photograph and waited for things to happen. After a little while the moon moved into position right above Bismarck’s most prominent landmark. This was a nice photographic “cherry on top” to put an even better end to my Wednesday.

Milky Way Morning

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One of the primary reasons I got into photography was astrophotography, or photographing the night sky. I’ve always been a big stargazer and have quite the equipment for doing so (even down to an iTunes playlist, which I will share soon). I got my first camera to take pictures of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in particular, and even got a few shots before the sunspots responsible for them fizzled. Since then we’ve been in a solar minimum, one with an in explicable lack of sunspots. I have been blaming myself and my camera purchase, of course.

Then I got my new camera and have had a very hard time finding some night skies. Usually when they were clear, the moon would pollute the scene with unwanted light. That or I just wasn’t able to break away at night to try for some cool shots. This weekend I did get a chance to hang out with the new camera and some other gear. One of the reasons I wanted to upgrade my camera was for the new one’s better performance in low light, and I was not disappointed.

This is one of my new favorite stargazing nooks, and as I grow accustomed to the features of the new camera I’m sure you’ll see more of this lone tree or the hidden rural road featured in the first photo above. I was only out for a short time, but my friend and I saw LOTS of shooting stars and satellites. The Milky Way was quite visible until the moon started to rise on the east horizon. It was also getting cold and late, so we called it quits for the time being. Hopefully I will have plenty of stargazing photos to add to these over the rest of the summer!

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. — Psalm 19:1

Odd convergence

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I was a little bummed tonight when clouds rolled in and blocked the sunset. I had envisioned a trip north, perhaps to Double Ditch, but soon realized that such a journey would be all for naught. As I nosed the truck eastward on Highway 1804, however, I did see something worth a quick photo: these rays.

These are really bizarre when you consider that the sun was behind me. The only explanation I can come up with is that they were caused by the sun breaking through the clouds behind me, really really high, and the apparent convergence of the rays of light is only due to the distance involved. The technical term for this is “vanishing point”, the point at which parallel lines seem to converge. Any other theories, since we know there wasn’t a second massive light source over the eastern horizon?

Sister Moon

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While hiking back to my truck from what used to be Hillside Park, I noticed this moon peeking through the branches over my head. Naturally I broke out the tripod one more time and took a quick shot of it!

The past few days have been weird in that they’ve started out so cloudy and then cleared up just in time for some nice evening skies. I’ll take ’em.

Flyby

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I knew that the space station was going to be passing by tonight, because it has been doing so on a nightly basis. I perched myself on the University of Mary hill, got my camera ready, and had one shot at success. I was hoping for a little flatter trajectory, with an arc passing almost horizontally across the frame, but that wasn’t in the cards. I got the shot, however. I processed different areas of this photo differently to bring out the detail in each.

The ISS traversed the sky overhead for several minutes before fading into the dark night sky. Then I hopped in the truck, ran back to town and perused the Bismarck public library for a bit, then brought home a Lightning McQueen toddler bed for one of my two two-year-old boys. Ka-chow!

This year’s Perseid meteor shower

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Earlier this week I was able to go out in the middle of the night and deprive myself of sleep in order to observe – and attempt to capture – the Perseid meteor shower. Despite the overwhelming light of the moon, I think it was a success.

Balancing a camera for long stellar exposures gets a bit more complicated when the moon is visible and bright; it brightens the sky considerably, drowning out many of the meteors and putting more light into the camera than one would like. While I was able to perform that balancing act ok, it did affect the kind of pictures that were possible.

I’d hoped to catch a brilliant, sparkly meteor painting a broad, sweeping arc across my camera’s field of view. Sadly, that didn’t happen this time around. I did, however, have a really nice time with my best friend and get to drink some ice cold Dew out in the middle of nowhere with my camera. I even had some pro HD video gear with me from work, but it simply wasn’t sensitive enough for the task.

Lots of Bismarck-Mandan residents were “in the know” about the meteor shower; I spotted many of them in my trek out of town to escape the city light. Hopefully they got as good a show as we did. There are more meteor showers coming up this year; if you missed this one, look out for more! Central North Dakota is a great place to go for watching these events, so be sure to take advantage of our location.

Two sets of pioneers

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From the coordinates I had received, the ISS was going to appear in the west and travel toward the northeast. Wrong. My spotter told me via cell phone that it was heading in a far different direction than I had expected, so I had to call an audible. Instead of sitting behind the pioneer statue on the capitol mall, I had to dash around to the front of it and pick a new foreground object. Thankfully I was able to still keep the capitol building in the photo!

The few chances I would have had to get a horizontal trajectory of the ISS passing the capitol, it either appeared too far south of the capitol to work photographically or was obscured by clouds. Tonight’s photo, while not what I was trying so hard to set up for, isn’t bad; sometimes creativity gets a kick in the shorts, and this is one example!

Little fluffy clouds

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These actually aren’t such little fluffy clouds, like the title of my favorite song by The Orb. They’re long, linear fluffy clouds. Whether they’re ripples in the sky’s cover or something to do with a jet contrail (after all, we ARE considered “flyover country”) I can’t say. I just know that when I saw them this morning I had to hop out of the truck and throw on a really wide-angle lens to catch ’em!