Wesley's Tool-Box

While I've personally witnessed several solar eclipses before, none of them were total. So when I found out that one such occurrence would take place near a direct flight destination - Madrid, Spain - I seized the opportunity. Because Madrid was just outside the path of totality, I went to Segovia, a city about 70 km to the north, a day after my arrival. I scouted for a good location to observe the eclipse and eventually settled on a spot near Alcázar of Segovia. As you can see above, it was an excellent vantage point.

Since Segovia was a bit off from the "optimal" location, the totality would last just short of a minute, compared to nearly 2 minutes in some places. So that left less margin for error and thus I came prepared. Fortunately, my efforts paid off, and ended up shooting 35 photos of the totality, as well as several hundred of the partial eclipse. And I was able to do continuous shoots for the most part, except for a brief break where I had some issues with the tracker I brought. The entire sequence has been uploaded to YouTube.

It’s been just a few months since the last occurrence, but another total lunar eclipse took place yesterday. This one was a bit special since it coincided with the first full moon of the lunar year, which is a day of celebration called Jeongwol Daeboreum in Korea. It’s the first time that this has happened in 36 years. Naturally, I made a full preparation. iPhone 16 Pro would take wide angle timelapse, while Nikon P1000 would take zoomed-in photos of the Moon.

Unfortunately, the thick overcast clouds that had been lingering during the day refused to go away, and obscured my view of the moonrise. I nevertheless decided to stick around, and the gambit paid off somewhat. The Moon would occasionally pop out behind the clouds, allowing me to take at least some photos that would illustrate the progress of the lunar eclipse, including the totality. This was possible because the clouds had holes, allowing for windows of observation that lasted anywhere between tens of seconds to a few minutes.

After taking a few shots of the Moon with P1000, I realized that the cloud covers would prevent sufficient exposure, making the photos too dark even with a 1-second shutter speed. So I pivoted to using my iPhone 17 Pro Max instead, using its 8x zoom camera with Night Mode. It wouldn’t look as sharp as P1000, but some photos are better than none. The collection of the best shots are shown here.

Device: iPhone 17 Pro Max
Settings: 200mm equiv. - ISO 800~1600 - 5s - f/2.8
Time: 2026-03-03 19:52 ~ 22:32 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

Nuri, Korea's indigenous rocket also known as KSLV-2, took off from Naro Space Center for the first time in 2 and a half years at 1:13 AM today. This launch was the 4th overall, and also the first ever nighttime launch. I wasn't sure how well the photos and videos would turn out since all the rocket launches I've been to happened during the day. But I came in prepared and got the results I wanted.

For the equipment, I brought my well-trusted Nikon P1000 for the superzoom and my new iPhone 17 Pro Max as the back-up, relatively wide angle shot. Both were fortunately sensitive enough for capturing the visuals during this clear and dark night.

After observing the ISS last year, I was waiting for some interesting changes on board the space station. And this came in the form of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft docking on June 6 as a part of the Crew Flight Test. This test was originally planned to last about a week, but thruster issues kept preventing its return to Earth. This meant that when I finally got the opportunity to make an observation in Daejeon after the monsoon season was over, I could photograph it with the ISS.

Weather in August was still unstable, and forecast for August 15 was cloudy with a chance of rain in many places. But outlook for Daejeon was clear, so drove my car there to make an attempt. And as forecasted, I could see the Sun onobstructed and was able to make a satisfactory observation, as you can see in the composite photo above. The docked Starliner is easily visible as a bump on the left-hand side of the space station's main modules. You can also see the large sunspot named AR3784 near the center of the Sun.

For those who are not familiar with the space station's structure, here's an enlarged photo showing where the Boeing Starliner is currently located within the space station. It's docked to the IDA-2 at Harmony module's forward port. SpaceX Dragon spacecrafts have docked at this location before, so some of my previous observations show that at the same spot instead.

Device: Nikon P1000
Settings: 3000mm - ISO 125 - 1/2000s - f/8
Filters: ICE N100000 (Neutral Density 16.5 Stop)
Time: 2024-08-15 14:20 KST
Location: Daejeon, Korea
17 photos processed with Pixelmator 3.6.6, RegiStax 6.1.0.8, and PIPP 2.5.9