Category Archives: Photography

Photographing the Solar Eclipse 2024

Smarter Every Day: I Accidentally Photographed Something Unknown During the Eclipse. (YouTube, 23:40min)

I’m already looking forward to finding out if someone is able to identify the satellites.

Here’s the earlier video which he did in preparation for the eclipse: April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Here’s what you need to know. (YouTube, 22:55min) It includes a lot of information about things you can observe during the partial phases, like how shadows change or why small clouds will disappear.

There’s more information and a link to the eclipse app at Destin’s website: Smarter Every Day – Eclipse.

I haven’t experienced a total solar eclipse, only a few partial ones, but I hope to be able to see one in the future.

“[E]ngagement is growing, but it’s vapid, devoid of the deeper reflection that being in nature is meant to inspire”

The Walrus: How Selfie Culture Ruins the Great Outdoors for Everyone Else. “Social media has made natural spaces more popular. It could also destroy them.”

“For years, natural reserves have been seen as havens from the modern world, places where quotidian life gives way to quiet reflection and contemplation, often in relative isolation. But social media has disrupted the way we interact with the environment. With the right hashtag, anyone can view thousands of potential destinations—and choose which to visit based on aesthetics alone. A single social-media post can expose lesser-known or isolated places to the world. And that means good places can no longer hide. “They used to be local parks,“ says Mairi Welman, head of communications for the District of North Vancouver, which manages two popular parks near the city. “But now we’re starting to see international visitors coming—and those parks were never designed to handle those kinds of numbers.“ The influx has resulted in a host of problems, from woefully unprepared hikers getting hurt to people “using the environment as a bathroom.“ And then there’s the parking: “There have literally been screaming matches and fist fights over parking spots,“ she says. “It can be like a shopping mall at Christmas.“ “

Link via MetaFilter.

It’s full of stars!

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Tiny Planet Timelapse .

“You can pack a lot of sky watching into 30 seconds on this tiny planet. Of course, the full spherical image timelapse video was recorded on planet Earth, from Grande Pines Observatory outside Pinehurst, North Carolina. It was shot in early September with a single camera and circular fisheye lens, digitally combining one 24-hour period with camera and lens pointed up with one taken with camera and lens pointed down. The resulting image data is processed and projected onto a flat frame centered on the nadir, the point directly below the camera. Watch as clouds pass, shadows creep, and the sky cycles from day to night when stars swirl around the horizon. Keep watching, though. In a second sequence the projected center is the south celestial pole, planet Earth’s axis of rotation below the tiny planet horizon. Holding the stars fixed, the horizon itself rotates as the tiny planet swings around the frame, hiding half the sky through day and night.”

Superhero-vision camera

NPR all tech considered: Super Sensitive Sensor Sees What You Can’t.

“A team of engineers at Dartmouth College has invented a semiconductor chip that could someday give the camera in your phone the kind of vision even a superhero would envy. […] Fossum calls his new technology QIS, for Quanta Image Sensor. Instead of pixels, QIS chips have what Fossum and his colleagues call “jots.” Each jot can detect a single particle of light, called a photon.”