Wesley's Tool-Box

The roof of the new KPX headquarters at Bitgaram City in Naju is dubbed "Sky Park", so I thought it might be an interesting spot to photograph celestial objects. It is surrounded by small windows, obscuring low altitudes, but a good place otherwise. On the evening of the day after Christmas, a flyover of the International Space Station was expected on a clear sky, so I brought my Canon SX50 HS camera to the roof.

It was very windy and cold, and my bare hands holding the shutter button began to feel numb almost immediately. Luckily, the ISS began to appear on the western sky, so I pointed the camera towards it, helped by the iPhone 6 Plus mounted on the hot-shoe. In the span of about 3 minutes, I was able to take roughly 400 photos of the space station, of which 40% was in good state.

The 25 best shots can be seen here, starting at 18:37:00 and ending at 18:39:44, at about 7-second intervals. During most of the visible flyover time, ISS was turned on its "back", and then "rotated around" around 18:39:00, only to disappear about a minute after. The turnaround point was when it was closest to the observer, about 560km away. The animated version with each frame 5 seconds apart should illustrate this quite nicely.

What I like about this observation is that the ISS was captured on camera more clearly than most of the attempts made in Suwon, except for the direct overhead pass last year. The morning flyover photographed last March shows the opposite turnaround, but was much blurrier. The difference is quite noticeable. Looks like I'll be able to enjoy doing astrophotography even more at this new location.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/320s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-12-26 18:37 - 18:40 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

With iOS 8, apps can now provide individual manual control of ISO, shutter speed, focus, exposure, and white balance using public API. Apps that take advantage of this can bring fine-grained control of the cameras on the iPhone, a much sought feature by the users especially since iPhone's cameras perform so well. Now, there's a bit of problem with low light mode in iPhone 6 Plus, but that's another story.

The story here is that I used the iPhone 6 Plus camera on manual settings to take a photo of the Moon that's showing through a pair of Bushnell Birding Series 8x40 binoculars. Without them, the Moon would have come out as a tiny blob about 25 pixels wide. I held up the phone to the ocular lens by hand. It's not as impressive as the 50x zoom photos that my Canon SX50 HS can take, but it give me hope that some low-magnification astrophotography could be done with my iPhone with some clever apps and a clamp that can fix the phone to the binoculars.

Device: iPhone 6 Plus & Bushnell Birding Series 8x40
Settings : 29mm - ISO 50 - 1/125s - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time : 2014-11-03 01:34 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

Lunar eclipses happen every year, so it's not particularly rare. But they're not always total eclipses. In fact, the last total lunar eclipse in Korea happened in 2011. So this time around, I got myself fully ready to take some nice photos of the event with my superzoom camera, Canon SX50 HS.

On October 8, the Moon was to rise from due east on 17:59 and the eclipse was to start right after at 18:14, but the building next to my workplace was blocking the view. So after the work hours were over, I headed to a nearby overpass and set up my tripod near the center. I was able to start seeing the Moon getting behind the Earth's shadow, but just as I started taking the photos, heavy clouds started to block the view. It was frustrating, but I waited out.

Mars comes very close to Earth every 780 days or so. This happened again last night - distance between Mars and Earth was 0.618 AU. The last time Mars made an approach closer than this was back in December 19, 2007, when it was 0.589 AU. At these distances, Mars is 15 arc seconds big, which registers as 10 pixels wide on my SX50 HS at maximum optical zoom. Until the next approaches on May 31, 2016, or July 31, 2018, this is about as big as it gets for the camera. Still, using both the 2x digital teleconverter and RegiStax stacking, I was able to get a clearer image of the planet from the multiple photos.

Meanwhile, a full moon was right next to Mars yesterday. This created a good opportunity to take both the Moon and Mars in the same photo. Full moon is quite bright, but Mars was also shining at its peak (-1.4 magnitude), so it was holding on its own. Interestingly, a lunar eclipse is also supposed to happen today, dimming the Moon so that Mars would be easier to see. But it happens during the day here, while both the Moon and Mars are below the horizon. So that's no go for me.

The lunar eclipse that is visible in my country would happen on the early evening of October 8, 2014, starting as the Moon rises from the horizon. At that time, the faint Uranus (5.7 magnitude) would be next to the Moon. I wonder if the eclipsed Moon would be dim enough for me to see the planet, weather and location permitting.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Filters: None
Location: Suwon, Korea

Main Image
Settings: 351mm (reduced to 20%) - ISO 80 - 1/80s - f/5.6
Time: 2014-04-14 23:34 KST

Inset
Settings: 1200mm (w/ 2x Digital TC) - ISO 80 - 1/200s - f/6.5
Time: 2014-04-14 23:23 KST
41 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8