ZapperZ's Great Outdoors Photo Contest

  • Thread starter Astronuc
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In summary: Those are great! The first one is my favorite-pure snow with a perfect sky.This shot is not of the caliber of many here, but I needed to get out and capture some fall colors today. This is a pair of apple trees at a scenic overlook dedicated to the Old Canada Road.
  • #561
Andre said:
Great, nice pix :approve: Careful with the knees, they hate descending when you get older.
Yep! Eventually, I had to give up scaling mountains. Actually, I could climb Katahdin a couple of times a day, but coming back down was too painful to do even once. The last time, my knees were so swollen that I had trouble getting my pants off so I could shower. Not good.
 
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  • #562
Right, I know all about it. Climbing is great. Descending sucks.

But I did the Mount Valier the other year
 
  • #563
Very scenic, Pooh!
 
  • #564
Something has been lurking in my garden. It was getting dark and the glare from the flash off the measuring scale washed out the toe nails.

http://imageshack.us/a/img10/9973/img0053yjp.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img577/8971/img0051mq.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img26/3746/img0057ga.jpg
 
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  • #565
You left this one out, I did a search on bear tracks and found it.

Bear-Tracks-old_8395.jpg
 
  • #566
If I see a bear in my garden here in Kansas, I'm moving.
 
  • #567
We have bears. They are shy and secretive, and they are more interested in avoiding confrontation than you are. One morning I went out to find a heavy welded-wire suet cage torn apart and bent. That suet feeder was hanging high up under the eaves right in front of my desk (I like to watch birds) so that bear was pretty darned tall. I knew he was living on the back side of my property anyway, since he had front paw-tracks that I couldn't cover with my hands.
 
  • #568
turbo said:
We have bears. They are shy and secretive, and they are more interested in avoiding confrontation than you are. One morning I went out to find a heavy welded-wire suet cage torn apart and bent. That suet feeder was hanging high up under the eaves right in front of my desk (I like to watch birds) so that bear was pretty darned tall. I knew he was living on the back side of my property anyway, since he had front paw-tracks that I couldn't cover with my hands.
Now I know I'm not coming to Maine. :biggrin:

Just kidding. I'd love to come to Maine.
 
  • #570
Andre said:
Right, I know all about it. Climbing is great. Descending sucks.

But I did the Mount Valier the other year

turbo said:
Very scenic, Pooh!

I was cleaning out my harddisk and stumbled upon the proof of that.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/IMG_1332.jpg
 
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  • #571
Nice Andre :)
 
  • #572
Thanks Gad, you are kind. The reason why I look so ugly is not only because I am, but also because I press my lips together to force normal breathing, avoiding hyperventilating during that long climb.
 
  • #573
Ugly?.. Trust me, you don't want to see me while hiking. :biggrin:

Hyperventilating is a problem for me, I just keep taking short breaks to avoid it.
 
  • #574
Finally, a few clear nights in a row- here's andromeda (now up to 1 hr integration time)

http://imageshack.us/a/img525/3553/1hrtifrgb.jpg

and the Orion nebula (2 minutes or so)

http://imageshack.us/a/img692/3126/orionzi.jpg

The tracking mount, while extremely user-friendly, is definitely a big step up. First, the total weight of everything is now about 100kg- I have to let the system 'settle' into the damp ground for a minute or so to stabilize, and moving it around ain't trivial. Second, while the polar alignment step really couldn't be much simpler- a newbie like me mastered it after 2 or 3 nights- my backyard has a lot of mature trees, severely restricting the number of places I can set up and directions I can look after alignment. Lastly, because it's cold out, I have a problem with focus drift as the lens cools down. It's not a problem *if* there are bright stars in the field of view, but for Andromeda, I have to rotate the lens, re-focus, and then use the setting circles to get me back to where I was.

However, the biggest difficulty I struggled with (and still struggle with) is weight balancing- it appears that the declination axis (analogous to longitude), which holds the mounting dovetail is asymmetric: there is a front/back orientation that must be used, otherwise the declination axis will experience a fairly large torque when looking toward zenith. I didn't find any mention of this in the manual, and I spent quite a few nights cursing fairly loudly before I figured it out.

With Orion, I played around with different acquisition times- 30s is a little too long, leading to frames lost due to 'wobble'- here's a tight crop of 9 successive frames:

http://imageshack.us/a/img7/8118/montagecgo.jpg

Of the 9, maybe 3 are acceptable. This is *not* due to atmospheric seeing problems. Seen as an animation, the stars undergo sinusoidal oscillations in one axis (right ascension, I think), and a slow drift in the other. I think this is 'periodic error correction' and 'declination drift', neither of which I can easily correct. So instead, I just use shorter exposures- 10s seems to give me a >80% acceptable image rate, and is still long enough that I don't have to worry about burning out another shutter anytime soon.
 
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  • #575
Beautiful pictures Andy!
 
  • #576
Gad said:
Beautiful pictures Andy!

Thanks!
 
  • #579
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  • #580
A cocktail of of outdoor pictures taken by someoe I know during a journey. :smile:

0710110407297ft7zguk2vzl.jpg

071011040730kuvtnwxj78fnmhfy0x70.jpg

071011040730u086j1yikus30de.jpg

071011060738z3qhiwkjui9dd.jpg

071011060738wfmkhqw2dgu82mjrlyr.jpg

07101106073996uj31coy6co.jpg

071011060705sj06ox1fakodr.jpg

0714110307279xnn1mhcrczu37d.jpg
 
  • #581
Some very nice pictures, including the carcass of a PBY Catalina.
 
  • #582
Very nice pictures Abstr7ct! :)
 
  • #584
On a ridge - http://screen.yahoo.com/motorcycle-ridge-riding-084000429.html
 
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  • #585
Last night, moon's closest approach to Jupiter (85mm focal length):

http://imageshack.us/a/img138/2082/dsc029311.jpg

Jupiter is the bright blue dot above the moon, and the Pleiades are visible to the right as well. A well-defined half-moon shaped glare spot is visible. 'Zooming out' to 15mm reveals Orion off to the left:

http://imageshack.us/a/img109/4415/resultofdsc02939.jpg
 
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  • #587
Amazing!
 
  • #588
This was certainly outdoors, shot last week, a panorama of 7 pictures sewed together.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f-tn.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f.jpg

The weather gives a complete wrong image of how the holiday has been, because we also have seen this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/waterspout.jpg
 
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  • #589
Andre said:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f-tn.jpg

Great view. Where is it?
 
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  • #590
Ah, I wondered if there were enough clues to have a landmark solve. But I guess not.

It's in south east Spain, the village in front is probably Orba
 
  • #591
Andre said:
Ah, I wondered if there were enough clues to have a landmark solve. But I guess not.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/59514378

It's in south east Spain, the village in front is probably Orba

More like Parcent :wink:

Let's face it - it was a sheer luck. But its is exactly kind of the road I would take being in the area.
 
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  • #592
Couldn't see the comet, but these were a nice alternative:

http://imageshack.us/a/img841/9532/dsc03497bu.jpg
(downsized 50%)

http://imageshack.us/a/img62/5378/dsc035061filtered1.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img341/2730/dsc03529we.jpg
 
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  • #593
Not the greatest quality but I caught it. Dulles Airport is about 15 miles due west of here - hence the aircraft flybys.
Yay, my first comet! :smile:

PanSTARRS1.jpg


PanSTARRS2.jpg


PanSTARRS3.jpg
 
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  • #594
Borg said:
Not the greatest quality but I caught it. Dulles Airport is about 15 miles due west of here - hence the aircraft flybys.
Yay, my first comet! :smile:

Nice job!
 

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