Witt’s End

Only got the camera out of the bag once during our recent trip to Canada. Too many other fun things going on, plus, it didn’t get really dark up there until about 11pm and by then we were done. And there was that night in that Irish pub, the Harp. This is all kind of nerdy so just enjoy the pix if you don’t care for all the trauma (and drama) of getting the shots.

This panorama was 7 camera positions, 3 shots per position. Shoulda shot another row at the bottom. Man, you really have to work fast doing this with sun sets. I’m going back to stars. Made with the new Nikkor 20mm, f1.8. great lens. Real sharp with limited distortion.

Four camera positions, 5 shots per position. However, I did get those two people in the left position. I could take them out but I left them for scale. Shoulda done another row for more sky.

Attempted verticalrama. One camera position, 6 layers. Needs a better subject, and a bunch of stars, but it was a good experiment.

Well, it was suppose to be the Strawberry Moon. Amazing how it looks, shooting through 87% humidity when the moon is at the lowest point of its orbit. Maybe they should call it the Lemon Moon. Plus, it was 251,000 miles away. Whatta ya expect? All went well until a neighbor rode up behind me (silently) on his bicycle and said, “Whatcha lookin’ at?” Yikes!

So here’s a couple artsy shots. Made with the Sigma 600mm, Nikon D850.

Okay, I’ll try not to get too nerdy. Tonight is the Full Strawberry Moon. I got out last night because with the weather, ya never know. So my pic is with the moon at 99.1% Close enough for rock-n-roll. I’ll skip over the part of the story where a doe deer took exception to my presence, or the cute skunk family I saw—three really cute babies, nor the part of how I had to crawl around on my belly like a snake—in the same places where the Canada geese walk—to get this shot. I’ve been studying and working on a technique for taking vertical panoramas. And although it doesn’t show in the image, thankfully, it was shot from a single camera position, with 6 rows of pictures all (neatly) stitched together. Marshall Lake, Sagamore Hills, Ohio, Rokinon 14mm on Nikon D850.

Enjoy the image. I have to go finish some laundry,

After a few nights of air-you-can wear, it was comforting to have to dig out the puffy jacket while gazing at the stars. No skunks this evening. I suppose they’re not back from their field trip to Washington D.C. for the big birthday bash. The coyotes were practicing for their summer concert series. I really like their rendition of, “‘Till We Eat Again.” A real classic. My focus last night was on M5, a globular cluster found in the constellation of Serpens. It’s thought to be one of the older (13 billion years old), certainly larger, of the globulars, about 25 million lightyears away. It contains an estimated 500,000 stars. The red/orange stars you see here are old, the blue ones new. If our sun were part of this cluster it would be so dull we could not find it. That bright star to the lower left is 5 Serpentis—a huge subgiant, twice the radius of our sun. Image made with SeeStar S30 scope, 480 stacked images. Post processing in SeeStar. Okay, I got a bit nerdy. Not much else going on until tomorrow. Stay tuned.