Tuesday, 16 November 2010

Great Tit, the Moon and Jupiter

The Great Tit is roosting in the nest box for the tenth night running.

Great Tit by day and by night:
Still plenty of feathers left over after last week's scrap.
Great Tit - Day and Night

Jupiter is quite bright at the moment. Two nights running I have tried to photo Jupiter and its moons. Still photos were a complete failure. The length of exposure needed meant that  the planet moved across the sky by a small fraction of a degree but enough to make the moons appear more like UFOs. In the end I set up the Panasonic SDR-H80 on a sturdy tripod, switched it to night vision and full 70x optical zoom. The resultant video clip is a bit jerky with the slow shutter speed of night vision and the rotation of the Earth.

Jupiter with four moons, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa. Three are easy to spot. The fourth is much dimmer and further off to the left of Jupiter and comes into view on and off.



I did manage some still photos of the Moon. Being a lot brighter the exposures were much shorter.

Moon

12 comments:

  1. John that video and Moon shot are excellent.
    To think of the distance involved, and yet such a clear video; and the Moon, one of the best I've seen.

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  2. Thank you Keith. The 'secret' on taking the Moon shot was to use not only a hefty tripod but also a wireless release for the camera to get any camera shake down to a minimum.

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  3. John, a great video. Best I've seen without very expensive auto tracking devices. I use a cable release as I can never see to set the camera to wireless in the dark. should be two torches in the camera bag but I pinch them for other jobs and forget to return them.

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  4. A very special shot of the Moon John.

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  5. Thanks Adrian. I hadn't really expected the camcorder to capture anything. I did have a torch with me so I could find the button for manual focus.

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  6. Thank you Roy. It was a good phase of the Moon for the shadows to show up the detail.

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  7. John, I love the video of Jupiter, and especially the music that you have purt to go with it . Thankyou.

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  8. Thank you Gerry. The music is 'Riders of Rhythm Force' but I can't trace who recorded it.

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  9. A lovely capture of the Great Tit John and I am very glad it still has some feathers left :)

    That really is an excellent photo of the Moon and a fascinating video too.

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  10. Amazing shots of Jupiter! So exciting that I can clearly see the four moons as well.

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  11. Thank you Jan. I will admit I was pleased with the Moon photo.

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  12. It was pretty well worth getting cold for Matron. I wish I had done it a few weeks ago when Jupiter was closer. Apart from the Moon it's the brightest thing in the sky at the moment.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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