Possible Aurora Tonight

I see from the BBC News site that there is a possibility of an aurora tonight as the Sun sent out a massive solar flare in our direction. Unfortunately the amount of cloud over the UK at the moment could make any sighting impossible.

BBC report is HERE.

17.17 GMT  Aurorawatch have just issued an Amber Alert for possible aurora activity but their site is showing little activity at the moment. The site can be found HERE.

Experimenting With Pictures

One of the things I enjoy when visiting Adrian's blog - Adrian's Images - is to see what he has been doing with Photoshop. One technique which has always intrigued me is colour popping, though I had no idea what it was called until very recently. Adrian put a detailed 'how to' on his other blog - Seeing to Pictures. I don't use Photoshop. I have used Paint Shop Pro since about version 2 so the method was slightly different but I decided to have a go. The picture I chose was taken at least a year ago and a bit grainy but the subject seemed to me to be ideal for the technique of only having colour on the main subject of the photo.

Here is before and after:



My thanks to Adrian for his detailed explanation. I very rarely head towards the complication of playing with layers and it turned out to be easier than I had thought.

Talking of layers - the sky was pretty clear towards tea time yesterday and the Moon was fully visible so I plonked the Canon XL2 outside with the Canon 70-200mm L series lens fitted. There is a special adaptor which enables EF lenses to fit the XL. This has its own lens system which gives just over 7x magnification. Thus at 200mm the EF lens acts like a 1400mm. At this magnification the Moon filled quite a large amount of the frame but looked very bare as the rest of the view and sky was bare.

After filming the Moon I moved the camcorder and filmed some nearby tree branches with the lens at the 70mm setting. Using Video Studio Pro X3 the Moon shot was put on the main video track and the tree branches on the overlay track with 68% transparency. The colour temperature of the main video track was altered to give the Moon a slightly blue hue.



Music is an old MIDI file played through a Roland keyboard. The Moon is not moving but the Earth is so to a fixed camera it appears to move across the sky. The movement is in real time, not speeded up.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Congratulations to Adrian, Glo, Keith and Jan for deserving a gold star for last week's identification of a cone. Not sure from what tree as I picked it up on our perambulations.

   

Let us see how well you get on with the new puzzle picture:

Done in a bit of a rush as I only made my mind up what to use at the last minute.

Clue: Could be a snug hide away.

No prizes for a correct identification. Just for fun.

Blue Tit and Tree Sparrows

It has taken literally hours to upload less than 150MB of video. YouTube kept stalling and even when one eventually uploaded I was informed it had failed because of  'an unexplained error'. Eventually I uploaded them to Photobucket.

A Blue Tit at the peanut feeder:



I think there were three Tree Sparrows visiting the bird table. The wire mesh is to keep the larger birds out and give the smaller ones a chance.

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tits, Some of the Regulars

Not a lot different going on at the moment. Both these videos were made to try out various things. The first is a short clip of both Great Tits making a recent visit to the Nest Box. The video was put together using VideoPad.



This longer video was shot using a different camcorder. A s/h Canon XL2 which can take interchangeable lenses. Some was shot using the 20x optical zoom which comes with the camera and some with the Canon 70-200 EF IS L lens. Alternative lenses have to be focussed manually. It was unfortunate that yesterday morning gave dull rainy conditions. The XL2 records in wide screen HD.



There are so many buttons, dials and facilities on the XL2 it is going to take quite a while to learn to drive it and I'm looking forward to some good results once the Sun makes an appearance. 

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Some Colour at Last

It is great to see that we must be getting closer to Spring. On our afternoon walkabouts there are some flowers to be seen. In the churchyard the patch of Winter Aconite is growing each year and always puts on a cheerful show,



Nearby in the churchyard are several clumps of Snowdrops. Another welcome sight.



Also to be seen in several gardens are various colours of Crocus. These are growing in one of my plant troughs.



I can see that it wont be too long before Daffodils and Narcissus are in flower as the stalks are about half height now.

The photos were taken with my mobile phone.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Well, I seem to have won the gold star again for last week's puzzle picture. No. It wasn't a spud, tater or potato. Wilma was on the right lines by suggesting it was a rock and Glo did think about dried fish skin. It was no use putting the chip pan on because the fish I had photographed was a fossil from my tiny collection.

  



At 50mm length it wouldn't have made much of a fish and chip supper anyway.
My thanks as always to all who had a go at identifying the photo.

Now for something a lot less ancient for this week's macro puzzle:


Clue:  Evergreen descendants confined here.
No prizes - just for fun.