Light painting with Slow Shutter Cam app for iPhone

While we were waiting for it to get dark on Friday night, my brother and sister helped me make some light paintings on my iPhone using nothing but Slow Shutter Cam (). Dang, I feel like I should be on Slow Shutter Cam payroll by now since I've mentioned it in no less than 6 different blog posts!

Glowstick silhouette with laser pointer heart

Glowstick tracing around hands and fingers

Manipulating the Heavens Above URL to track satellites further back in time

In my previous post, I noticed something in my star circle photo that wasn't a plane like the rest of the non-star objects. Based on the appearance of the streak, I concluded that it was an Iridium flare cut in half by my camera's processing time between two consecutive 15 second exposures.

Iridium 80 above Indiana on June 15, 2012 at 11:30pm

How could I prove that it was an Iridium flare? How would I know which individual satellite is in my image? I tried looking up the object on Heavens Above, but the Iridium flare data only went back to the past 48 hours. I noticed that the Heavens Above URL basically includes the information used to calculate the numbers in the table, so I started to mess around with the values.

Here is the URL for the "previous 48 hrs" Iridium flare list (on the day I wrote this):
http://www.heavens-above.com/iridium.asp?Dur=2&Date=41077.7391100926&lat=39.95502&lng=-86.00647&loc=Fishers%2c+IN&alt=0&tz=EST


Notice that the URL itself includes the information displayed in the table. We have the coordinates, the time zone, and values of Dur=2 and Date=41077. Dur=2 stands for duration of 2, or two days displayed on the table. The date threw me off at first, because we are definitely not in the year 41077 yet! I changed the date to Date=1 and the table jumped to January 1, 1900.

So the date=## in the URL is the number of days since January 1, 1900. I was able to find my Iridium flare from last weekend by turning the date back by a couple of days: From 41077 to 41075.

Now my Iridium flare from Friday night shows up in the table! Sure enough, a flare of magnitude -4 at 30° elevation in the NE sky fits the image I captured perfectly! It looks like Iridium 80 was the culprit.

Star trails and possible Iridium flare over Indiana

These two images were my longest star trail stacks to date, the first with 107 and the second with 109 stacked images (15 sec exposure each). My plan was to tape the shutter down and let the battery die, but I came out to find my first exposure had stopped because the tape lost its grip after an hour and a half or so.

My second image began at around 2:00am and went until the battery died. I taped the shutter down while the camera was on a table instead of pressing down on the camera while mounted on the tripod, this let me press down with more force to secure the shutter with my mechanical pencil eraser.

Possible Iridium flare cut off by my camera between exposures

Here is a close-up of an object in the first photo that does not appear to be a plane like the rest of the lights. My guess would be that this is a satellite coming into view that is cut off by the 15 sec exposure. This seems to fit the description of an Iridium flare coming into view and fading out again without traveling very far across the sky. The Iridium flare on Wikipedia shows a 30 second exposure that matches the beginning and end of my flare, which was cut in half by the camera's processing time.

Update: Tracking backwards on the Heavens Above website, I concluded this was, in fact, Iridium 80 at 11:30pm at 30 deg elevation.

I don't usually let to take photos until the battery dies, because I'm nervous about leaving my camera out in front of my apartment complex. That's why it was such a treat to visit my brother at his house in Fishers, because I could let my camera go and go!

Here's a picture of my brother learning how to do star trail photography with his Nikon D3000. His trails didn't turn out as good as mine, but he's just beginning!

Brian getting into astrophotography for the first time

He was so excited, we even got up on the roof to check out the view - deciding later that the roof was too steep for a tripod observatory.

Rooftop view of Fishers, IN taken with iPhone at 9:53pm

Finally, here is a video showing the creation of the star trails. I saved each composite image in StarStaX so the trails appear to grow over time.

Lightning photographs produce crazy lens flares with Slow Shutter Cam app for iPhone

I'm not sure if it's because the lightning was so bright, or because I was shooting through the side window of my car, but the lightning is creating some pretty epic lens flares in this photo!

I was using Slow Shutter Cam app for iPhone in Light Trail mode with a light sensitivity of 1.

I was driving home from Indiana on Saturday when I saw some huge lightning bolts streaking through the sky in front of my car. It wasn't raining yet, so I thought it would be a good time to try photographing lightning with my iPhone for the first time.

I pulled off the highway and stopped in a church parking lot. I pressed my camera up against the drive side window and started taking light trail pictures with the app. 

Not as impressive as other photos of lightning I've seen with an iPhone, but not bad for shooting through a window during daylight. I also think the lens flares add something cool to the photos even though it's basically just a glare caused by the window of my car. 

My photos of comet Hale-Bopp from March 23, 1997

Comet Hale-Bopp appears above the western horizon near Dayton, Ohio

I had just turned 13 when The Great Comet of 1997 appeared in the light-polluted skies over the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio. I don't remember hearing much about it, an occasional photo in the paper kept me interested for a few minutes possibly. Looking through Wikipedia now, I'm astonished that the thing was visible for several months!

My 7th grade handwriting, looks about the same now

On the afternoon of March 23, 1997 my parents took me to our neighborhood Motophoto (do these still exist?) to get a special kind of film for low-light photography. I looked through my camera's manual to learn that I had a way to do long-exposure shots by holding down the shutter button.
That night, I went into the field across the street with my dad to set up the tripod and take some photos of the comet that was faintly visible to the west. Holding the shutter button down by hand, I snapped some long exposure photos (about 15 seconds each).

Hale-Bopp higher in the sky on the evening of March 23, 1997

I didn't realize it at the time, but according to Wikipedia, "Hale–Bopp had its closest approach to Earth on March 22, 1997 at a distance of 1.315 AU." This is probably why there was an article in the Dayton Daily News which prompted my parents to suggest a photography expedition that next evening.

I remember taking my photos in to 7th grade science class at Watt's Middle School. The teacher and the other students were very impressed, and remarked at my cleverness as they passed the photos around the room (or at least that's how I remember it).

This comet had a large impact on my interest in science and the night sky, and I eagerly await its return in the year 4385!