The Great Outdoors

KrisOhn

Some of my favourite climbing videos:

http://vimeo.com/33306702

Original send of the above video: http://vimeo.com/17898669

http://vimeo.com/32210515

http://vimeo.com/30115662

http://vimeo.com/31147587

http://vimeo.com/11893609

http://vimeo.com/8726543

http://vimeo.com/27074856

Andy Resnick

It's been frustrating lately- nearly a month of completely overcast skies. About a week ago, there was a brief period when I could try getting the Horsehead nebula. I stacked 140 0.8 s images, 400mm f/2.8 ISO 6400 and got this (cropped and downsized selection), after considerable post-processing of the stacked image:



The brightest star is Zeta Orionis. If you look carefully, you can barely see a whisper of NGC 2024 (flame nebula) on the upper left, but there is absolutely no evidence of either the Horsehead nebula or IC434, which should be near center in the image.

I'm confused about where the problem is: there are stars of +15mag clearly visible (there's a tight trio of stars in the lower right, one is 2MASS J05403667-0243469 with a R magnitude of 15.4), so I don't understand why NGC 2024 and IC434 are not visible... are they strictly NIR objects?

Any tips would be appreciated, TIA.

Andy Resnick

Yesterday was the perihelion:

Andy Resnick

And 24 hours later:


There's enough sunspots to measure the differential rotation rate- here's a close-up of the group on the left:

KrisOhn

Somedays, I want to throw it all away and do what this guy is doing:
http://vimeo.com/34482694

KrisOhn

From my -40c bike ride today:

Andy Resnick

Fantastic high speed video:

http://video.mpora.com/watch/HoyrU9Ckd/

I wonder if I can cook up an excuse to get a Phantom v711 in the lab.....

Borek

So, we have spent last week in Bieszczady, the most SE part of Poland. We had just a few hours of Sun, but other than that we had a nice winter - a lot of snow, almost no wind, and a frost - down to around -10ºC (14ºF), but not that cold for most of the time.

We were not expecting fresh snow here, but that's what we found. In some places it was half thigh high (or even half [censored]body part on the back, just above the thigh[/censored] high), but mostly just to the knee. I was breaking the trail, Marzena was following:



Have you ever wondered where does the charcoal come from? This guy makes it:



Together with lots of smoke:



As for someone living in the woods (literally: he spends weeks watching these retorts; not that he is so far from the closest village, less than an hour walk) he was surprisingly knowledgeable, we had a short, but very nice talk.

Sun was not cooperating, so even if we were surrounded by picturesque views, they all look dull on pictures:



There were just a sunny spells now and then:





Bieszczady are not high (most peaks are below 4000 ft). Some of the higher peaks are bald - which is rather unusual in other Polish mountains (apart from rocky peaks in Tatra mountains, but they are much higher). These bald parts are called "połoniny" - my dictionary translates it as mountains pastures, but I am not sure they were ever used as pastures. This flat white snow that doesn't want to have any texture is a połonina:



And finally, a picture for Andre - this is a mountain shelter called "Chatka Puchatka" - Polish for "The House at Pooh Corner", located on Połonina Wetlińska, it was about 200 meters behind my back when I took the picture above:



(http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schroni...tlińskiej - in Polish)

Astronuc

Beautiful, Borek!

Andy Resnick

A composite image of Jupiter and the Galilean moons, taken as the weather permitted over the past few months. This image is about 25% of the actual size, so the patterns of the moons are harder to see, but visible enough to still be dramatic (IMO).

rhody

Someone shared this with me, and I thought it was beautiful, so I will share it with you.

A low Impact Woodland home

This is the completed frame from the second hand built house, awesome.

The high def link for this is here.



Rhody...

Gad

Very beautiful, Rhody :)

rhody

I think so too, did you check out the high resolution image as well ? Awesome, and organic.

Rhody...

rhody

Since I am on a roll, check this out, no high resolution pictures this time, but I like everything about the concept.
Rhody...

fuzzyfelt

I agree with rhody and Gad, thanks for sharing this, rhody.

Gad

Awesome! So fantasias

Astronuc

National Geographic posts pictures of the day. I prefer the pictures taken far away from metropolitan areas, i.e., in rural or wild areas.

Here is a picture taken on the steppes of Mongolia.

http://photography.nationalgeographi...ongolia-leong/