Wesley's Tool-Box

When I look outside the window of my apartment in the city with a million people, stars are hard to spot. But the camera can see much more than that for me. Of course, the light pollution still prevents seeing really dim stuff, but it does capture what I would be able to see with my naked eyes in a remote place.

To make best use of the situation, I have to point the camera high up. The lower part of the sky simply drowns in ambient lights. The photo of the constellation Boötes here spans altitude from 34 to 56 degrees in the eastern sky. Even after adjusting the curves and levels settings, the sky below 45 degrees simply doesn't get dark enough. Meanwhile, faint stars all the way to magnitude 9 can be found here and there, but only up to magnitude 7 can be spotted consistently.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 48mm - ISO 400 - 15s - f/4.0
Time: 2013-12-13 06:07 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

In testing long exposures with my SX50 HS, the camera caught something I didn't expect - an airplane taking off to the skies. The wings have blinking lights attached, and the streak left by the airplane ended up having periodic dots next to it. That's something you can't expect in the streaking stars. Speaking of stars, the brightest streak belongs to Jupiter.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 24mm - ISO 80 - 120s - f/3.4
Time: 2013-12-11 21:23 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

While I made an unsuccessful attempt to photograph Tiangong-1 space station transit the Sun, I noticed some big sunspots. Sunspots like these cause solar flares, which have been prevalent in the recent months. This particular group of sunspots shown here is called AR 11899, of which the biggest one is casually referred to as "Sunspot 1899". It's about 4 times the size of the Earth. If you click the picture for the full look of the Sun, you can also spot AR 11903 near the middle.

Settings: 1200mm - ISO 250 - 1/1000s - f/6.5
Time: 2013-11-23 13:22 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea
10 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Yesterday, there was a rare "hybrid" (annular/total) solar eclipse that were visible in parts of Africa and Americas. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the night in Korea, so I couldn't personally see it. Next solar eclipse that I can see without leaving the country would be in 2016.

So I'm looking back at the solar eclipse that I did see and photograph last year on the roof of the company office. The 24 photographs of the Sun, starting from the lower left (because it was rising) were taken at a 5-minute interval and then put into one image. The eclipse started as the Sun rose over the horizon, and finished just before the work hours. Talk about work-friendly celestrial event.

Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Time: 2012-05-21 06:51 - 08:46 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea

Proving that the prediction data from CalSky is pretty accurate, I was able to capture the International Space Station (ISS) making a pass in front of the Sun using my Canon SX50 HS with my hand-made sun filter yesterday afternoon. My dad was watching the phenomenon with binoculars next to me, but the transit only took a little more than a second, so neither of us were sure of observing it until the proof was found in the captures. A total of three photos contained the silhouette of ISS in the backdrop of the Sun.



Clicking the above shows the Sun (30 frames from the observation stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8 ) and ISS captures composed into one in its original resolution.

Clicking the bottom shows the original frames of the capture.
Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 1200mm - ISO 250 - 1/1600s
Time: 2013-08-16 16:50:38 KST
Location: Near Bomunho Lake, Gyeongju, Korea