Shorncliffe Pier sunrise

Headed out pre-dawn again with Andrew this morning to shoot sunrise. This time at Shorncliffe Pier. Unfortunately we didn't get the pretty pink fluffy clouds we were after. Still, it's a great location. Here's the pick of my bunch.

Fingal Head sunrise

Went down to Fingal to capture Comet Lovejoy, but the clouds had another idea. So we stayed for sunrise. Well worth it. I did have a minor disagreement with a wave over my location - ie my camera and I got drenched. Thought I'd cleaned the lens in the dark, but there was some flare in this image from some droplets that I didn't get. Did my best at processing it out. If you look closely, there's a bonus ghostly fisherman somewhere in there. :)

Christmas lights

This is a house around the corner from Kristy's parents' place. Regularly wins the local best lights competitions. All of the lights are synchronised to a soundtrack, changing colour and turning on and off to the music, and are absolutely spectacular.

Hayden had an absolute ball, dancing away to the music and watching the lights. Hilarious. He loves his music and dancing, and the crowd was smiling watching him squeal with delight and jigging away.

F-wow-ah

Hayden at Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens.

PixInsight: master calibration files workflow

After doing a lot of reading and trying to understand the best settings and workflow for creating master calibration files for astro image processing in PixInsight, I thought I'd post these screenshots of the settings here, more for my poor memory than anything else.

There is plenty of good theory and background information in the Image Integration documentation and also the Master Calibration Frames: Acquisition and Processing tutorial.

I can flyyyyyyyyy!

Took the camera to the park yesterday for a change. Been a while and wanted to capture some of Hayden's shenanigans.

Cause and effect:

Jupiter 13/11/11

Had a go at shooting Jupiter the other night. First time in over 2 years. Bit grainy, I think due to the debayering from monochrome images captures to make it colour. Need to get to the bottom of that. Still, pretty happy with the detail.

Imaged with DBK21 camera, 2.5x Powermate and 10" Newtonian scope.

Said the spiders to the fly...

Went to New Farm Park playground this morning, managed to sneak away from Kristy and Hayden for 20mins to take some macros.

Fly:


Jumping spider:

Hunting bugs

I recently joined the Australian Invertebrate Forum to learn and share more about Australian insects and spiders. To try to learn how to find more critters, I got the following advice from one of the more experienced members there, "critter guy":

I can haz speling?

Saw this sign at a service station today. You'd think signwriters would have to be a little more conscious of their spelling than the rest of us?

My astro gear

Don't think I've posted a shot of my telescope. Here are some shots I took of it at Astrofest this year.

This shows the main imaging scope, a 10" Newtonian, on the computerised German Equatorial Mount. On top of the imaging scope is a smaller guide scope that is used to track accurately during long exposures. In the black toolbox is power and data hub.


This shot shows my tent (a camping shower actually) in the background that has chair, table, and laptop inside to keep dew off:

7Timer! weather charts updated

Not sure how long ago, but the wonderful 7Timer! website looks like it's had a bit of a facelift. It's a great tool for checking out what the weather is going to be like for astro using the below graphical chart. Basically, the bluer and/or smaller, the better.

Back from Adelaide

Went to Adelaide for 5 days to visit Kristy's grandmother who hasn't been able to travel to meet Hayden.



Day 1: Couple of photos from Brisbane airport waiting for the plane down there.



Just liked Hayden's expression of wonder/surprise in this one:




Day 2: Went to the Adelaide Zoo. Really enjoyed the zoo, felt really open and most of the animals were quite active, not sleeping or hiding. I've already posted a couple of photos here.

Same mandrill but different pose:


Lachlan, Hayden's cousin, loves this bag:


Day 3: Went into Adelaide city in the morning, visited the Central Markets in the morning, then Jacob's Creek in the Barossa Valley to catch up with Kristy's grandmother and cousin for lunch.

At the markets:


At Jacob's Creek:




Lachlan getting a bit tired and grumpy, and letting Hayden know all about it :)

Adelaide Zoo

More than a mere cat, a meerkat! I know, I'm hilarious:



Colourful mandrill showing his chompers:

Katherine and Michael's Wedding

Loved the expression, like "OMG What have I gotten myself into"! Hehe.

M20 Trifid Nebula

This is my one and only deep sky image that I took at Astrofest. Quite happy with the way it turned out. I particularly like the dusty regions showing through.

2011 Queensland Astrofest

Just got back from the 2011 Queensland Astrofest. Was there for 2 nights. Good to get out under dark skies, it's just so peaceful.

This is my first attempt at star trails. Goal was just to get my scope and computer tent (bottom left) and the South Celestial Pole (centre of the circumpolar star trails). Focus and exposure was a bit of a guess after a bit of a chat with one of the other guys there. Very happy with the way it turned out. This was as many exposures as I got before dew set in. Next time might try a dew heater for my lens.

Halcyon days

Dropped in to see Mum and Dad's new place. They seem very happy with it, the neighbours/community, and the facilities. Went for a walk around with them to the lake area. I get the impression they always love catching up with Hayden more than me these days ;)

Mmm, beer

I know. I'm a terrible father...

Total Lunar Eclipse

Got up at 2.30am this morning to view and image the Total Lunar Eclipse. Met up with some other IceInSpace members, and was very glad for the company as we had decided to image from New Farm overlooking the Storey Bridge and city. That part of town, that time of night, alone, with expensive camera gear, not good. Safety in numbers :D

I hadn't really planned what or how I was going to shoot it. And it showed. Totally butchered what I had intended to be a timelapse attempt. Wasn't overly happy with any of the results, but used it as a learning exercise for the next one on 10 December this year.

Above is a montage as the Moon went from near full to totality. Click the image for a larger view and you can see the brightness and colours change as the Moon goes from full to totality.

The below red coloured Moon was taken around 5.30am. The colour is as close to "true" as I could get. Doesn't quite look that red to the naked eye, but the camera picks up the colour better. The Moon is fully in the shadow of the Earth here, and the red is sunlight refracted by Earth's atmosphere.

Back from Wordpress :(

I was going to transfer this photoblog to my own server at http://piggo.com/~troy and use Wordpress to do it, but the spammers seem to have found the site and have bombarding it with their garbage. It doesn't make it to the page itself, it has to be moderated/approved by me before publishing, but I've received 50 or so spam posts in the last day and I'm not going to do that much moderating.

So as I had it set up previously, anyone going to the above link will get redirected here anyway. Blogspot has a much better anti-spam detection before I even see it.

NGC6188 - an emission nebula in the constellation Ara

Clear night last night, so took the opportunity to capture this emission nebula in the constellation Ara.

Damsel in distress

Well, not really. This cute little damselfly was patient enough with me to allow a portrait. Took this at Mt Coot-Tha Botanical Gardens yesterday.

Mastercard Wedding

Received this by email the other day. Great story, funny too. But it's been going around for years and it's just an urban legend. For some reason the authors seem to think that saying it actually appeared on Jay Leno's show makes it more believable. Suppose the fact it's still circulating since 1985 means that it does.

For anyone who feels they've been invited to too many weddings lately have a laugh. This is actually true. It was in a local newspaper in South Carolina and even Jay Leno mentioned it on the Tonight Show.

This is a true story about a recent wedding that took place at Clemson University. It was a huge wedding with about 300 guests.

After the wedding, at the reception, the groom got up on stage at the microphone to talk to the crowd. He said that he wanted to thank everyone for coming, many from long distances, to support them at their wedding. He especially wanted to thank the bride's and groom's families for coming and to thank his new father-in-law for providing such a fabulous reception.

To thank everyone for coming, bringing gifts and everything, he said he wanted to give everyone a special gift just from him. So taped to the bottom of everyone's chair, including the wedding party, was a manila envelope.

He said that this was his gift and told everyone to open their envelopes.

Inside each envelope was an 8x10 photo of his best man having sex... with the bride. He had gotten suspicious of the two of them and hired a private detective to trail them weeks prior to the wedding.

After he stood there and watched the people's reactions for a couple of minutes, he turned to the best man and said, "F*CK you!" He turned to his bride and said, "F*CK you!" Then he turned to the dumbfounded crowd and said, "I'm out of here!"

He had the marriage annulled the first thing that Monday morning. While most of us would have broken off the engagement immediately after finding out about the affair, this guy goes through with it anyway, as if nothing was wrong.

His revenge:

1) Making the bride's parents pay over $32,000 for 300 guests for a wedding and reception.

2) Letting everyone know exactly what did happen. And, best of all...

3) Trashing the bride's and best man's reputations in front of all of their friends and their entire families.

This guy has balls the size of church bells. Do you think we might see one of those MasterCard "Priceless" commercials out of this? Huh?

Elegant wedding for 300 family and guests -- $32,000
Photographers for the wedding -- $3,000 Deluxe
Honeymoon accommodations in Maui for 2 weeks -- $8,500
The look on everyone's faces after seeing a photo of
the Bride and Best Man having sex -- Priceless!!!

Source: Urban Legends "Mastercard Wedding" page

Hoaxes and Urban Legends

I often receive emails that are hoaxes or urban legends. It may not always go down well with those that sent the email to me, but I always try to reply and let them know it's a hoax.

Some of these hoaxes and urban legends are funny stories and good for a laugh, but some are just plain misleading. I don't know why, but it's always bugged me and I don't understand who would invent such complete fabrications. And these stories circulate the internet for years and years, and people change dates to make them seem new or more credible.

So I decided that when I receive one of these emails now, I'm going to post it here to "out" them.

If ever you're interested in checking a story is real or not, just type some key words from the beginning of the email along with the word hoax. You'll usually get some hits if it is from these credible (in my opinion) sites:

Hoax Slayer
Snopes
Urban Legends

My experience - if it sounds like a hoax or urban legend, it probably is.

Full Moon risen

On a night when I was plagued with computer problems, this was the only shot I walked away with.

Shot this with my 5D MkII on 10" Newtonian.

Mt Warning sunset

Had some spectacular sunsets down here at Salt this week. This was the view from our balcony the other afternoon. I really like the way the salt spray or haze gives depth to the shot between the hills/mountains.

Normally I'd shoot landscapes with a tripod and a wide angle lens, but this was shot hand-held with a 135mm lens.

Fingal Head landscapes

Down at Salt for a holiday. Having some great weather. While we're down here I wanted to take the opportunity to shoot some landscapes at Fingal Head. I knew there was this cool rock formation, but hadn't been there before.

Walked out at 3.30-4am on rocks in the dark to leave myself enough time to scope the place out, get set up, and catch sunrise. A rock rolled under me and I sprained a finger, bruised my arm and put my back out. Still. It was worth it. :D

I had to use a couple of filters over the lens to get these shots to look this way "in camera".

I used a 3 stop neutral density filter over the whole lens to cut down the light, which meant a slower shutter speed, which meant I got that nice, smooth ocean look.

I also used a 3 stop reverse graduated neutral density filter, which cuts down the light on the brighter sky, but not the ocean. Just so the overall exposure looks right.

You can kind of achieve some of the effects above with Photoshop, but with the filters you can get it pretty much right in camera, which is a much more betterer way of doing it. A bit more purist. Unlike my english.

Highly recommend checking out the full size version of this panorama:

Salt

Down at Salt for a week's holiday. How relaxing.

Spent a lot of time in the pool at the resort. Hayden loves the pool as you might know.

He wasn't so keen on the surf, but it was his first time in the actual waves. Think they were a bit intimidating coming at him.