Last year, the Apollo 50 Festival was held on the National Mall in Washington, DC. At this time, the National Air and Space Museum produced this event. It was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. Since I can remember, my dad fostered an interest in the space program. With this in mind, I thoroughly studied the vehicles used to send people into space. However, I have never seen a rocket launch live.
Last summer, we made it out to the Mall to see the ‘Go For the Moon’ show. A projection was sent onto a side of the Washington Monument. Being that I was a STEM student throughout my academic career, I was inspired by the crowd that gathered out there that summer night. NASA and the space program was the impetus for so many to get into the sciences. For those that have not seen an American rocket launch, this was a great demonstration. Pairing it with inspiring words from JFK, a soaring musical soundtrack, and the projection of the Saturn V rocket would probably inspire another generation to continue space exploration now!
I feel like I have been so lazy with the blog! Sorry if you have just been anxiously hitting refresh to see if I get inspired today J Well, I am really getting caught up with all my assignments, and getting things back on track after going on a short vacation. Last week some excitement happened in the early morning skies that I almost missed! There was a lunar eclipse that would be viewable in our part of the world right at the time that I would be getting up to start my day – a perfect chance to make some photos without too much effort! And with the backlog of things I had to do, this was what I needed.
A lunar eclipse is an awesome practice for your camera. Trying to get good photos of a bright moon can teach you a lot about metering, or “how a camera views and image”. Left on automatic, a camera has a difficult time getting a good photo of the face of the moon. This is due to the construction of the light meter in every camera system. They do not see composition, nor can they read the photographer’s mind to know exactly the goals for the image.
A meter measures all the light coming into the sensor, and it calculates the aperture and shutter speed that will give a middle gray image. It does not know that you want the bright light of the moon to be lowered to see the details of the surface. Lowering the amount of light will also make the rest of the photo darker – which is the compromise when making these photos. You will lose detail around the bright moon. During an eclipse that is happening right outside my front door– that is fine by me! I do not care about any of the other surrounding details.
Once I figured an exposure that gave me the detail that I was looking for, I played with all kinds of settings. Sometimes I changed the aperture, sometimes the ISO. The exposure values were very similar, but I wanted to see how the camera responds when pushed in such a dark scene.
Lightroom-Library-of-lunar-eclipse
It only lasted a few minutes before the moon ducked too low in the horizon. I was very lucky! No need to go to extra lengths to get these photos, but so many that I’ll keep in the collection.
If you have been listening to the weather reports on the news, or science postings online, there are lots of unique objects to view in the dark skies. Firstly, there is the comet ISON. It is making a trek through the inner solar system, and will pass close to the sun this month. US viewers can view the comet before the sunrise. There have been many predictions that it may be a very bright display in early morning skies.
Rocket Launch
Last night, there was a Minotaur rocket launch from the NASA launch center in Wallops Island, VA. Most of the US Eastern seaboard was in the view able area of the launch. I was not prepared to get photos of this event with any decent camera. I did not know what direction to even look for these! Luckily, my wife spotted the glow of the engines as it ascended above the tree line in our neighborhood.
This was my first experience seeing something like this. Moreover I was surprised at how quickly it passed in and out of view! Next time, I will try to get this on camera. However, for this launch, I am admiring the many photos that are being shared on social media. It could be seen from Virginia to New York. If you have never tried photographing the stars or moon, having a digital camera will greatly improve your images because of the preview on the back of the camera. Here is an example of an early morning view of the full moon:
This illustrates how a camera meter will see a scene compared to your eyes. A camera will want to have everything in the frame be a middle gray which will make everything here too bright. You want to base your exposure on the brightness of the moon since that is the detail you want to see. The houses, and other things in the frame can go dark since they are not your main subject. To accomplish this, you can change the metering mode to a Spot meter instead of metering the whole frame, or you could just quickly change the overall exposure to be darker by increasing shutter speed. This is what I did since it was so cold out this morning! Once I had the moon looking good, I just zoomed in as far as I could then fired a few frames before going back in to make tea.
Early-morning-lunar-eclipse-©TimeLine-Media
