Timelapse from northern Finland (by Henri Luoma)

There has been some time now, that I've not updated this blog. I found recently on the Facebook, a link to stunning night timelapse video from northern Finland (what is really worth of mentioning). The photos and video is made by Henri Luoma. Click here to see the colorful nightscapes.

Visit to Nuuksio

On the 9th March 2013, there was another trip to Nuuksio. We did photograph some nightsky timelapse - for the startrails image. Totally 36 images were taken, before my Nikon D200 jammed - due to low temperature.

Other activity this night, includes visual observing, with colleagues 25cm newton. For the solar system, we took look at Saturn. Most of other deep sky targets, were from the Messier catalog. The familiar M81/82 pair showed nicely. M101 was a bit more difficult then, it showed as faint large are smudge. I did not see the sprilar construction of this galaxy.

Returned to home, after two...three hours of observing. Thanks to Tomi for the car ride :-)

Sir Patrick Moore, R.I.P

From BBC news today...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20657939

ISS and Sun (10th Nov 2012)

Another alarm again, from CalSky service. This time ISS would have passed in front of Sun disk at Espoo / Finland, on 10th November 2012. Estimated time was approximately 12:33. I tried to follow, also this time - plans were not successful. Sky was full cloudy...

Images from Utö, Messier 27

Another image from trip to Utö... This time one planetary nebula (Messier 27), as wide angle image. It is visible in image upper left corner, as green dot. Difficult imaging indeed, conditions were windy and I had to struggle keeping my tripod on the ground. Image taken with Nikon D200, Nikkor AF-S G 50mm, at f/1.4, single 8s exposure at ISO2500. Unfortunately sensor produces lot of noise :-(

Utö nightsky, milky way

In the the beginning of October 2012, we had a company's photography club trip to Utö. It is a small island, in southern Finnish archipelago.

Expected clear sky there, for astro imaging. Expectations were not completely fulfilled. Occasionally sky was clear and milky way visible. Definitely a place, where you need to visit again some day...

Milky way, Utö 10/2012

ISS and Moon (19.3.2012)

Yesterday I got another alarm from CalSky -service, this time also ISS crossing the Moon disk. It happened at 19th March 2012, little bit before 8am - in Finnish local time. Not even a chance to observe, sleet was falling from the sky. Waiting for the next passing then...

ISS and Moon (18.3.2012)

Approximately one week ago, I got email alert from the CalSky service. It predicted that the ISS would pass across the Moon disk at southern Finland, on Sunday morning 18th March 2012. The time for the crossing was 07:13:02 local time, re-checked yesterday - schedule was 07:12:57.

I tried to prepare equiment for taking image sequence of the ISS, with Nikon D200 and C8 OTA. Also found out that memory buffer at D200, fills is pretty quickly - max 5s sequence at 6fps. It would have needed at least 10...15s of buffer, because the passing of ISS would propably (?) change some seconds of the predicted time.

Another problem would been carrying the C8 scope to suitable place, since I do not have a car. On top of the building - there would be high place, but metal fence blocks the visibility. So then, waiting for the next passing of the ISS over moon or sun disk...

Opinion poll, light pollution in Finland

Light pollution, this is the area of nature conservation, that has been ignored way too long. Day by day, less people are able to see the magnificent wonders of beautiful night sky with thousands of twinkling stars. There is also a risk that light pollution affects to humans natural day / sleep rhythm - especially if bright lights are shining through the night. The affects to nature, like birds, needs more investigating. This problem is getting bigger and bigger. Now it is time to make a difference !

Finland’s environmental administration has introduced opinion poll. There you can share your concern of the light pollution problems. For more details about poll and web feedback form (in Finnish only), use following link here.

UARS deorbit information

Yesterday and a day before that, eyes around the world - have been watching the sky more often. NASA's atmospeheric satellite UARS has been lowering in its orbit, and burned (partially?) in the atmospehere. Some of the biggers part may have survived to fall into ground. Not sure where the debris has been landed to. Here is the NASA update:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/uars/index.html

Course on DSRL astrophotography

Back at home, after a weekend at Hauho. There we spent a nice weekend, with other enthusiastic colleagues.

Some info sessions were held on image processing technology. One session that was most most important for me, was held by Petri Kehusmaa. Also other items were covered, like stacking of the images and softaware details - with AviStack, RegiStax and IRIS.

I enjoyed of being there, and got many new ideas and tricks to use in my own astronomy hobby. Thanks for the organisers, lecturers and colleagues for the good weekend.

PS:
The collimation result is not the most important thing, it's the high quality time spent doing that on a good company :-)

Startrails and visual observing

In beginning of this week, I visited to Nuuksio with my colleague. Result of the trip was this star trail photo. It was made with Startrails -software (developed by Achim Schaller). Used lens was Sigma 4.5mm/2.8. Same is available also in video file, to it see visit -> here <--.


We also did some visual observing of different targets. Moon showed a sign of Werner X -symbol. Occasionally polar cap of Mars was visible (150x magnification at SW 127 MAK). Saturn was a bit too low for good observing, only two faint darker bands were visible. Colors were distorted, due to refraction caused by atmosphere.

Moon imaging

Image from the archives.... Soon after midnight at 4th September 2009, full moon was near enough for composing it with urban landscape (tower of local church).Clouds passed by occasionally, totally blocking visibility. I had to move my tripod to new position after few minutes. Attached frame was the best composition I got. Image was taken at Espoo, southern Finland.

Full moon imaging

Yesterday was not a successful day, clouds blocked visibility at southern Finland. So no photographs then... Next possibility for full moon is on 6th August 2009.

Here's my last image of full moon at 9th May 2009. Moon is distorted by mirage effect (different temperatures at air layers). This I consider my best image of full moon.

In couple of weeks I should get some detailed explanation of this mirage effect, and some comments what I heard - it was not so typical to see distorted moon at relatively high altitudes like in this case. When I have feedback, I'll get back to this...

I made also a composite image, to clear out how moon shape was distorted. It was interesting to follow...

Saturn imaging (12th April 2009)

One image from the archives... I shot Saturn -at Vesanto in central Finland- with my C8 OTA & 2x Barlow lens. Used camera type was Philips SPC900NC. I had a lot of interference lines visible in stacked image. Periodic noise was needed to be removed with IRIS, postprocessing was done at Photoshop CS2.

Unsuccessfull moon imaging

This time I did not had a good luck... According to yellow almanac, full moon today was rising at 23:23 (in Helsinki region). I checked skies, but too much clouds on distant horizon to see the moon. I am going to attempt photography of "low moon" again, at 7th July 2009.

Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin)

I had a second planned attempt to visually observe and photograph this comet, at 15th March 2009. Skies were not clear, so that was it. Next opportunity, hopefully is at coming weekend (If skies are clear, that maybe would be 21st March).

Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin)

Today evening Espoo skies were not clear enough for photography, a layer of hazy clouds were on sky. I took a look at Lulin, with 15*70 binoculars. It was visible as a dim and fuzzy spot. Tomorrow I will check sky conditions again.

Comet is currently located at Leo -constellation. Comet brightness will decrease within next few weeks. Best information of this comet is on Seiichi Yoshida's pages.

Venus imaging

On second of February 2009 I had my C8 OTA collimated and ready for planet imaging. Venus was already too low on the sky, but I still was able to take an acceptable image. Below is one captured frame from video, showing clearly disturbances in the image.
Below is result of 219 stacked frames. Next time I need to do imaging, when Venus is higher on the sky. Focusing must be done more carefully, Bahtinov mask could help...
Additional information:
Date: 2.2.2009
Time: 20:17 (GMT+2)
Location: Karakallio, Espoo, Finland
Telescope: Celestron C8
Web camera: Philips SPC 900NC
Barlow: TeleVue 3x

Nightsky imaging, part1

During christmas, only one night (!) was clear to take some nightsky photos. These three following images were took at place, which is quite a free from light pollution (ie. Vesanto at central Finland). After my eyes had adapted to darkness, the sight was really beautiful. Milky Way was very clearly visible, and no moonlight at all. Dark areas were easily seen.

Natures sounds was really interesting to listen: owl on the near forest, sounds of ice movement on the nearby lake, dogs barking on the neighborhood, water flowing on the small river and low temperature cracking sounds from trees. Interesting experience indeed...

One sound I was not able to recognize - it sounded like mixture of laughing and barking with a hoarse tone in it. I suspect it could be either Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) or Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes). If someone knows this sound, leave a comment...

Orion, Hyades cluster and Pleiades (M45).
Big Dipper at northern sky.
Cygnus and Milky Way.