A Cloudy Tiny Planet

I am still out of inspiration for suitable mystery objects at the moment. To fill the gap here is a tiny planet video I put together a short while ago.



I had been searching for the one and only timelapse I made of a Sunset but it has eluded all efforts to find where I stored it. This timelapse was of daytime clouds which looked a bit insipid until I added the 'blast' clip filter in iMovie.

As we are heading to longer and longer dark evenings and nights I have been adding to my stock of audio books. I do use Kobo for eBooks and audio books. They are limited to use on their apps and hardware. I also like to have audio books in mp3 format. I can have them on a USB stick so I can play them on anything, especially my audio system. To that end I found quite a few download sites with free to download and use recordings. Two I have used a lot are Digitalbook.io and audiobooksworld.org. Most books are decades old as they are now out of copyright. They tend to be Librivox recordings which are all in the public domain. You could, of course, go direct to librivox.org though I find their site a bit more daunting to sort through. As far as I can tell all the books can be listened to on line as well as being available for download.

The End of the Road

On our after tea walk we went right to the end of the lane. A couple of shots looking in an easterly direction towards the coast. More clouds to bring another batch of snow showers. They arrive about an hour later





and a view looking back towards the setting Sun.



This time I used the vivid HDR setting on the Canon G5X. Daytime temperatures are struggling to pass 2C and don't look as though they will improve much before Sunday. Looking at my solar radiation monitor recording at least we are having our strongest Sunlight so far this year though it soon goes down when the dark clouds pass over.

Snow or Rain?

On impulse tonight I decided to try to capture a night pass from the NOAA 18 weather satellite. Haven't tried a night pass for years so I had almost forgotten how to set up the software. Anyway this is the result showing the mass of cloud about to sweep across the UK bringing snow or rain according to the weather forecasters:



Obviously the land outlines and land colouring were added by the software as there is no visible light picture transmitted at night. The horizontal grey speckles are caused by my receiver picking up some local interference. I have the same problem with amateur radio. One day I will find out what is causing it.

Temperatures

As you may have gathered I am fascinated by all aspects of our weather systems.
Once the satellite map information has been decoded it is possible to see the recorded temperatures as I move the mouse over the map.

From NOAA 19 at 08.10 this morning (BST)



While the ground temperature here (where the salmon coloured cross is on the map) is about 19C the air higher up is in the region of 10C. To the south of the ROI the red / black heavy rain area shows cloud temperatures ranging from -30C to -60C. No wonder the temperature at ground level can drop so sharply in a heavy rainstorm. I assume that area is the one which is forecast to bring heavy showers to Lincolnshire later this afternoon.

A Bit Cloudy Today

NOAA 18 11.30 a.m.

Maybe Mammatus

On our way back from our early morning walkabout I could hear geese in the distance. Unfortunately they were too far away to photograph but I noticed a junction between two cloud formations which stretched right across the sky.





The cloud furthest away was darker than shown in the photos and the nearer definitely had the appearance of Mammatus cloud.

Time Lapse Clouds

This time I mounted my 3D printed phone holder on a tripod.

 

iPod clamped in place and set up in the garden.
5V power bank hanging below.



That view shows why I end up walking about half a kilometre when cutting the grass.

Once again I used the Apple Camera app to take the shots and produce the video.
I let it run for about 45 minutes.



Next time I'll try to get things level!

Cold, Wet and Cloudy

A bit nippy round the extremities on our early morning walkabout.
It was all of 6.5C and still damp after an earlier shower.
So much for the days planned activity of mowing my lawn.
Cutting longish wet grass uses up the mower's batteries much faster.
The situation was made worse by a couple more showers during the day.

We managed to dodge them for our mid afternoon walk.
By the look of the distant clouds we were just missing more rain







One bright note was a little flower skulking under my front hedge



No idea what it is or how it got there.

Top temperature today was 16.2C but as I write this it is diving down to single figures again.

Timelapse - Clouds

Nice fleecy clouds and some restful music.



Canon 350D, 1477 photos taken 1 every 5 seconds.

Once again the title was made using HitFilm2 Express.
I have now installed the latest version.  HitFilm Express v8.1
This is a free app / program available for Mac and Windows.
Of course they hope you will eventually buy their Pro version.

Blue Sky and White Clouds

As it looked like being a fine day yesterday I set up a camera outdoors to take a photograph every five seconds. Now the bulky leylandii is no more I have a better view of the sky. This is a time lapse video made from just over 1200 shots. About 2 hours sky watching reduced to 40 seconds:




I wonder whether you spotted the one frame where a Wood Pigeon photobombed the view of the clouds:

 



As for the camera nest box - both Great Tits have continued to make visits every day so far.
No sign of any nest building activity as yet.

The End of the Lane

On our walkabouts down our lane this is where we have to stop:



Years ago there was a path straight ahead going past the tree in the distance.
There was an attempt to have it recognised as a right of way but as you can see that failed.
I don't blame the farmer as that strip of land means more money crops and some antisocial dog walkers would let their dogs loose to rampage through the crops.

Looking at the field I showed being ploughed a while ago I am trying to see what has been planted. At the moment it looks like two crops in one field alternately spaced in strips. One pale yellow. The other green with very different leaf shapes:



I must remember to take some closer shots.

Just before reaching the end of the lane there is a a gap in the hedge allowing good views for cloud watching. This is three auto-stitched photos:

Clouds - Time-lapse

I've been promising myself to get round to making another time-lapse video of the passing clouds. To give a reasonable length of time to take the stills I have to wait until we return from our mid-morning perambulation. In this day and age it would be foolish to leave expensive camera equipment unattended even in the back garden. Problem is, the clouds often evaporate during the morning as the heat from the Sun increases and I don't always have fully charged batteries ready for a lengthy session.

Anyway, today I got round tuit and set up the modified Canon 1200D. The one which sees more IR and UV than normal which is why the green trees aren't.  1000 jpg exposures later I managed, with a struggle, to convert them to a video:



The cameras I usually use tend to run out of battery soon after the 700 exposure mark but this one still had about half left even after a couple of hours taking a shot every ten seconds.  I usually shoot the clouds as they retreat. Don't know about you but I find the time-lapse approaching clouds feels more foreboding, sinister in some way.

YouTube cut off the sound at the end. I had slowly faded it after the final part of the video but YT chopped that bit off. Must remember to put a plain colour filler in next time.

I've been playing a lot with my Amateur Radio gear. Had my first confirmed contact with a station in Brazil which really made me 'well chuffed'. 6039 miles with just 25W of power using a digital mode. Nearly got my first direct contact in the USA last night. My call was received and acknowledged but the conditions deteriorated rapidly so a full two-way contact wasn't made. I've talked to American amateurs in the past but that was by sending my signal up to an amateur satellite and having in re-broadcast.

A couple of B/W photos with the 520nm IR Filter

Mixing Channels - The Making of a B/W Picture

A brilliant Sunlight day with lots of bright blue sky and plenty of clouds, just right for a bit of infra red photography. Pity the wind was so bally cold.  A good job I'm not related to any brass monkeys. I was trying out a new IR filter on the 'full spectrum' 1200D. This one is infinitely adjustable from 530nm  to 720nm.

This photo was taken with it set to 530nm and the camera white balance set to the green grass.

Result as seen and taken by the camera:



The RAW file was adjusted for contrast and black level in Affinity Photo. Then the channel mixer was used to adjust each Red, Green & Blue level independantly on each R G & B channel:



Finally that was changed to B/W (greyscale) with a tad more tweaking:

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Blue Sky, White Clouds

Yesterday was one of my regular visits to The Wagon and Horses at South Reston to meet up with a friend and enjoy what are probably the best fish and chips anywhere around.

I always drive the back roads as it is half the distance compared with taking the main road. Along one straight stretch there is an unofficial layby where many a white van driver can be found taking a breather as I am usually passing about midday. Yesterday I had the space to myself. As it is next to a field entrance it is a good open spot to see across the farmland:



The view was perfect, lots of Sunlight and cloud formations. The above is six hand held photos auto stitched using iFoto Stitcher for OS X. Clicking on the photo takes you to Flickr where a larger version can be seen.

Cloudy Panorama

Taken a couple of days ago between heavy rain showers.
Three stitched photos using Autostitch (Mac) to make a panoramic view.

Enhanced slightly to show more detail in the shadows using Elements 10:



Almost sepia with just a bit of colour left in:



As always clicking on a photo takes you to Flickr where larger views can be seen.

End of Summer

I always find it a bit crazy that there are two different ways of timing the beginnings and ends of the seasons. Meteorologically speaking Autumn started on the 1st September but astronomically speaking the change varies slightly from year to year as it takes the Earth 365 days 5 hours and 49 minutes to travel round the Sun.  The astronomical change is on 22 / 23 September.

Whichever you choose to follow this three photo stitched panorama was taken  a week or so ago of a Summer blue sky and clouds over a corn field:

Friday at the Flicks - Blue & Great Tits + Clouds

Blue and Great Tits are often seen eating from the bottom of the peanut feeders:



Another Toshiba X-Sports timelapse of clouds:



Toshiba Camileo X-Sports, 1 photo every 5 seconds. Total 1056 photos before the battery ran out. Processed as a video using free Mac app Zeitraffer then in the free version of Video Pad.   Soundtrack - royalty free music 'All Fall Down' from Purple Planet.


Have a great weekend observing all aspects of nature around you.