The pix in my YouTube collection
are from having used mostly two point-and-shoot cameras. Incidentally,
smart-phone cameras also have capabilities for taking similar sky pix.
For people who haven't considered photographing sky objects, look, up in the sky. It could be Supermoon! Build your own pic collection for day or night moons! Also, pick other sky objects that catch your fancy.
I recently perused my cloud account for pix I've uploaded there
within maybe 10 years. One folder that caught my
eye—"NearSkyObjects-Canon PowerShot ELPH 190 IS". It consisted of eight
images from 2020 and six in 2021. I poked through my computer listings,
seeing additional sky images I could include in my slide show.
Most images are of the moon—day, night, various phases. Several are
in plant views. The final item is my time-lapse slide show of May 16
2022 lunar eclipse. Final tally of my sky objects for this blog topic is
23. (The count does not include YT videos from 2023 and 2024.)
Why only 44 seconds instead of reported totality of 2 minutes and 35
seconds? Clouds interfered with and distorted the capture, eventually
totally obscuring the corona after ~43 seconds. My entire recording was 2
minutes and 26 seconds, but the viewfinder showed only darkness from
about 44 seconds till the end. The video shows real-time speed (~44 seconds), then half speed.
Eclipse Day Decisions Made For Better or Worse
I couldn't order the weather. It was fickle for a good amount of
Texas, including my viewing site, Austin. Weather forecasts and updates
seemed to constantly change. Inclinations to travel were tempered by
fears of encountering vehicular multiple-dimpling and hail-caused car
window smashings. Also, destinations required real time to reach;
available time required for traveling eventually evaporated. We stayed
put.
From hearing stories about past eclipse events. area population
swelling and travel would be challenging for residents and visitors
alike. Highways and smaller roads could result in no-gos from traffic
overflow or collisions or combinations. News frequently broadcast alerts
about having certified solar glasses, stocking up on food, ensuring
full gas tanks, and preparing for hours-long departures afterwards. We
took the advisories seriously.
I should have thought of using a tripod for my Canon IXUS 180
(PowerShot) camera. As much as I tried to hold it steady, it shook.
After I truncated the recording from 2 minutes and 26 seconds, I
manually aligned the frames using GIMP. The process was similar to how I
aligned the October 2023 annular eclipse frames.
Another should-have-done was aiming the camera downward a few
seconds before totality, turning it on and starting to record, then
aiming the camera upward. I would have captured the timer beeper for
start of totality. (I did manage to capture the timer's end-of-totality
beep.)
GIMP and OpenShot Image Processing
In short, I used GIMP, with grid display to align the images in layer
views. The task was much more difficult than October 2023 annular
eclipse because of moving-clouds distortions and obscuring. Several
times, the view transitioned from disk to arc to smudge, in different
directions and varying focus qualities. Clouds! Consolation is that some
of the corona was viewable, and we got no rain.
As for OpenShot, I had help with converting the clip to individual
frames, then re-assemblling the edited frames into a view-stable
disk-centric movie. Turns out that trying to use OpenShot to assemble
the frames froze the tool. We used ffmpeg in a command window.
Extra Touches
Some features I hadn't tried ever, or in a long time:
I used some OpenShot's capabilitiese to crop, scale down, and move an inset movie of a kitchen timer.
I extracted about 50 seconds of audio in OpenShot, then opened and
edited it in Audacity. I added it to the video, along with the image of
the graph.
I created an outline circle to note the major visible prominence at 4 o'clock position.
If I Knew Then, ...
I discovered many of my actions generated a lot of heat before light.
Glad to have learned shorter steps eventually. A thought kept me going
for creating the video. I'd never think about processing another eclipse
set of images. Not inclined to go to another eclipse site any time
soon.
The next U.S. taste of totality comes in 2033 when an
eclipse brushes Alaska and Russia. And in 2044, one will cross Greenland
and western Canada, touching swaths of North Dakota and Montana. ... An
eclipse on the scale of Monday’s event won’t happen again until Aug.
12, 2045.
"Future Eclipses" provides some info in tables for future solar and lunar eclipses. Long haul to get there.
Our area (Austin) was fortunate enough to behold a partial solar
eclipse, clear skies and all. Texans in San Antonio, about 100 miles to
the south, got a fabulous annular eclipse because of that area being in
the zone of annularity.
My video
combines two views of the same image frames used. One portion shows the
sun aligned, and the other portion shows the sun drifting south a
little as the mount was not perfectly polar aligned.
I used tweaked versions (stationary sun, sun/moon movement) to build the side-by-side version.
The actual eclipse lasted over three hours. The resulting videos were
each about 36 seconds. Over 900 frames made up each video segment. It
was a learning process to prep and compile. Methodology for aligning the
sun images using GIMP, my graphics editor, evolved over a few days. I used grids, circumscribed squares, circles, squares and circles, disk shapes.
I
aligned using edges, then picking different edges as the moon advanced
along its route.
For an overview of the two main types of solar eclipses, Schreiner University's Eclipse Path site
provides overall info about solar eclipse paths for October 14 2023 and
April 8 2024. The NASA composite and Schreiner's video simulations for
the two featured eclipses are view worthy. Nice to also see a short
section about eclipse viewing safety.
A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between
the Sun and Earth, completely blocking the face of the Sun. People
located in the center of the Moon’s shadow ...
An annular solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Sun
and Earth, but when it is at or near its farthest point from Earth.
Because the Moon is farther away from Earth, ...
A partial solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Sun and
Earth but the Sun, Moon, and Earth are not perfectly lined up. Only a
part of the Sun will appear to be covered, giving it a crescent shape.
My profession had been technical writer/editor. Through TheWriteJob clublet (blog at http://thewritejob.blogspot.com), I have been exploring my inner creative writing, which includes mostly language enlightenment, entertainment, and a-muse-meant. Over time, I have become more active with images and my YouTube channel.
