Tag Archives: photo

The outburst of the Draconids

Last night (Saturday) the Draconids produced a pretty nice outburst as the Earth passed through clouds of dust left in space by the comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, resulting in a short but strong meteor shower. I had my camera outside for approximately three hours, taking pictures continuously (14 sec exposures every 15 seconds), so besides watching parts of the show with my own eyes (while the telescope was working on its own), I also got tens of shooting stars ‘on my memory card’. Unluckily it was almost full Moon, so the sky was very bright, and the Draconids are mostly faint meteors, but I still managed to see 46 of them in 31 minutes, so the outburst was indeed very strong.

Here is the nicest one (cropped) from my pictures, and if you continue further below, you can see animations of meteors leaving persistent trains! (But be patient, the animations are big and they will load slowly…) Check them out, because you do not see such things too often :) I even sent in a report to the International Meteor Organization, to place La Palma on their map. You can also check their results. Continue reading →

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Back at Mercator, now with photography equipment

For my last three observing runs, I preferred to have my racing bike with me on the Canary Islands instead of my photo gear. It would have been especially hard (and heavy) to carry my tripod along when I had to take care of my bike box… But now, at the end of the cycling season (and with quite some kilometers ridden on the Canaries in May and August already), I decided to bring the hardcore photography stuff. Thanks to Jonas now I even have a Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens with me. The view angle is basically the same (though the distortion is very different) as with my standard lens, but the maximum aperture is larger, which enables me to capture more of the faint starlight on the same exposure. Everything you will see in this post was taken with that lens. (Thanks again, Jonas!)

Of course packing was hell again (luckily I had better thing to do on the weekend, like cycling, playing with FIFA 12 – call me a child, I do not care :D), and I did not sleep too much during the night (but then almost 5 more hours on the planes, and this was the first time I have flown with a CRJ900). As my observing run starts on Wednesday only, now I have some time to concentrate on photography. The main goal is to take hundreds (thousands) of images again, and make a new version of my time lapse movie, The Starts of Mercator. And there are always some special things to take additional pictures of :) So lets see what we have here.

This was the first time ever that I have seen lenticular clouds over La Palma. They are usually not seen in good weather, so in astronomical terms, this was a bad sign for the forthcoming night… But not in photographic terms ;)

It was only ‘half moon’ (first quarter) over the Observatory, but it is already very bright. Without the moonlight, you cloud see the Milky Way towards the center of our galaxy on the left side of the picture. Now it is only visible, if you know what to look for… The bright path on the bottom is created by the headlights of someone driving up to the telescopes, and as you can see the dome of the WHT is open in the bottom right corner.

The lenticular cloud stayed for hours there, so I took a picture of it (and a whole time lapse sequence too) with the dorm of the Jacobus Kapteyn telescope in the foreground. Plus you can see the dim, outer part (looking into the anti-center direction) of the Milky Way with constellations like Cassiopeia and Perseus, plus you can easily (if you are/were an amateur astronomer) spot the Andromeda Galaxy in the top right corner.

Jupiter (the brightest ‘star’) and some winter constellations rising behind the INT building right before moonset (that’s why the building looks yellow and instead of white).

Looking towards the North celestistial pole. E pur si muove. It is not a real long exposure shot, but 140 (30 sec exposures) images stacked together from another time lapse sequence. The virtual circles are very nicely preserved thanks to the fisheye lens (compare it to the distortion of a standard lens here.)

Orion rising behind the INT. One hour before the arrival of the storm…

And then, at last but not least, the most special picture of the night. It is – again – part of a time lapse sequence, and you can see red sprites on the top, just below Orion. This is an extremely rarely photographed high altitude lightning, if you do a Google search on it, you won’t find many colour images… And to make it even more special, I was outside – monitoring the weather – when it happened, so I even saw it with my own eyes!!! Just as a red flash thanks to my peripheral vision, but I have seen it! Normally they can be seen from much further and at a lower view angle (and then they look more elongated thanks to the different perspective), so this is really the first image I have ever seen taken from almost below the event. Nice :)

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A proper thunderstorm

After two days of 33-35°C, yesterday evening a quite massive storm-front brought this short hot period to its end in Belgium. The storms came in waves, there were at least three of them passing over Leuven (and Belgium) – the first one arrived only 10 minutes after I arrived home from work. (This was not coincidental – I was checking the weather radar almost constantly to make sure I can still ride home without getting completely wet…) After I finished my dinner I decided to take some pictures, so I set up my tripod at the open window – inside enough to not get wet, but outside enough to capture a big portion of the sky. Then the rest of the job was mostly being lucky enough (and good settings of course :D)… At the end (after midnight), I had quite a lot of pictures with lightning on, and it could have been even better if there were more ‘outside the cloud’ lightning and not that many sheet lightning (inside the cloud, with the actual discharge path being hidden) instead. But I can not complain, as I got some really nice ones. (Unluckily I do not have the one which made me jump back from the window :D)

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April

Again a full mont passed since I posted anything here. I do not have the same motivation as before (to write regularly), but still, I would like to remember what happened with me, and my – built in – memory is not sufficient to handle all the information. So I write a post every month – at least. Now I am flying over Spain towards La Palma, with the clouds below, so I have time again :) Pictures are slightly randomly spread over this time. Figure out what is what ;)

First of all, this month, I have biked a lot. And when I say a lot, I really mean it. If I look at my calendar on Garmin Connect, it is full of rides. There were times when I rode too much, I could tell it from the way my legs denied to move as fast as my mind requested them to do. So with all the KUL trainings, the Brabantse Pijl (the sportive version, not the Race – which was the first out of the four wins for Gilbert early in the season, making him the ‘Armstrong of the spring classics’ this year), the first ever AstroTeam ride (with colleagues), the usual lonely rides to Mechelen, and a really good day to the citadel of Namur, I rode 885.44 kilometres (spent 29h 28m 08 s in the saddle, and burned ~25000 Calories), which made this April my best month on the racing bike ever. And I could have done more if I wanted, but there are other things in life, not just cycling. (Yeah, shocking statement, I know :D) But I enjoy every second on the road. I really fly on the bike :)

Work is OK, but a bit slow. Sometimes I have my ideas but I don’t feel like woking them out. I know the road which leads to the solution, but I don’t want to walk along it. And then it is sometimes really hard to force myself to stay concentrated on the details… But after Easter, we had a four day workshop at the Institute on binary stars and the Kepler satellite, and it was really good, I have learned a lot of useful and new stuff, which I will be able to use probably very soon.

Thanks to the workshop, I have met some old friends, and we had great dinners all week long. Just to mention one from the many, I had the best salmon of my life in the Lodge in Heverlee. Also, I served as the official photographer of the event, taking not just a series of static, but a full HD group ‘picture’ too ;) Everyone liked the idea – you can check it out for yourself on YouTube.

Just like last year, my mother came for a visit – and brought cake, wine, and Túró Rudi with herself :) Everyone asks the same question, so I have to make it clear, that I would have been happy to have her around even without these nice add-ons ;) But I would be a terrible liar if I were to deny that this way it was even better :D We had a nice weekend together, and this time the weather was also fine. In general, the weather in April was almost unbelievably sunny, warm and dry. Belgium is not a rainy place at all, the two years I have spent here really forces me to draw this conclusion.

And at last, but definitely not least, I spent three great days with Elise, whom I got to know last month in the Stuk. First, on the 20th after a morning meeting with my supervisor, I went to Antwerpen, where she gave me a tour around the city, but avoiding all the shopping streets :)

This really improved my opinion about the city a lot! Then on the last day of April, we went to Den Haag to the Netherlands – again for a picturesque city trip. It was the Queen’s birthday, so the abundance of people dressed in orange was extremely high.

We took quite a large amount of pictures too! Oh, and just to mention one special thing, I sat in the drivers seat of a tram – which we later took to just go around the city. And we ate delicious bread and cheese :) Then, to close the day we went back to Antwerpen to a nice Italian restaurant, where they served the best pizza of the city.

Finally – when I was almost on the train back to Leuven (I have already filled out my Rail Pass for the trip), we decided to have another trip on the following day (and be surprised, I was happy to cancel my cycling plans without any doubt), as the ticket inspectors were not too active on the trains that day (it might have something to do with the fact that crowd dressed in orange were blocking the aisle…), and our weekend ticket to the Netherlands stayed untouched ;) So I slept on the couch at Elise’s place (though I almost had to fight for it with her cat :D), then after a delicious breakfast (what a smoothie she made!), we left to Rotterdam.

I have seen some parts of the city when I was there last year to photograph the Tour de France and I already liked it a lot, but now it was even better. We walked around a much bigger area (so I have seen things a have not seen before), had an amazing clear and sunny – but not too warm – weather (perfect to lie or sit down on a square or at the river banks and just enjoy being there), and – the most important of all – I was not alone.

I really like the city, it is modern (has amazing architecture) but with a lot of green, and some well preserved and integrated older parts too… This was my best weekend for quite a long time. (We are just leaving the coast of the continental Europe behind while I am writing these words.) I really enjoyed taking pictures and talking with Elise, and then checking out our images on the trains back to Belgium. We had a wonderful time.

I missed the cheerful atmosphere a lot when I finally went home to Leuven, especially because I had to spend the next day with preparing and packing for La Palma, but I was very happy about the time we spent together. And for a side note, I really hate packing. And even though I really wanted to finish in time now, it was 2 AM when I finally closed my bike box. I have no idea how can I pack for such a long time… And now comes the funny part of the story. As usual, I have asked for a cab for the morning (5:15) from the same taxi company I always use, but it did not show up… I was waiting with my 60 kilograms of luggage in front of the house, and nothing… I tried to call them, but there was only voicemail. As I did not know any other companies, and it was pretty much too early to try to phone someone for help, I walked (rushed/struggled) to the station with all my stuff (I think I was quite a sight on the streets of Leuven – even for people who are used to see students travel with their suitcases every Friday and Sunday evening – with my backpack in front, the huge – and I am not kidding here – North Face XL travel duffel on my back, and pulling the bike box next to me – thank God it has wheels…), and took a taxi there. Luckily I was still in time, so if everything goes well, I will land on La Palma in one and a half hour :) Now it is two weeks of work and a week of holiday (cycling up and down) on the Canaries. This is the part of my job I like the most ;)

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I am one year older again. (Celebrating my birthday – or something like that -, tomorrow will be a holiday at K.U.Leuven…) Not a huge change, but being closer to thirty than twenty sounds a bit terrifying :D Anyway, what really matters is how old do you feel, and not how old you really are ;) Two weeks ago I (and Jonas, a colleague of mine) did some experiments with flashes in the dark corridors of the department, and one of the resulting portraits is shown above (a more conventional can be seen here). Just because the last portrait I had was already several years old…

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