Eaton Family Solarcan Project - Phase 2: Kaili

As covered in previous posts, late last year I discovered a product called the Solarcan, a pinhole camera created using an aluminum can with a small hole in the side and photographic paper inside, all to capture long-period exposures (weeks, months, years) of the Sun as it moves across the sky each day, images called solargraphs. See Eaton Family Solarcan Project - Phase 2: Olivia for more on solargraphs and the beginning of our adventure with Solarcans. 

Recently, we spent the day with our oldest granddaughter, Kaili.  While at their house to pick her up, she and I installed her Solarcan.

As with Olivia's family, Kaili and her parents lives in the burbs. Kai is an athlete, having played many sports including soccer, football, golf and basketball. Their house is on a cul-de-sac with two basketball backboards across from each other. We decided that placing her Solarcan on the fence along the north side of the cul-de-sac, facing due south with one of the backboards in the foreground and one just off in the distance, would make for an interesting solargraph, one that highlighted her love of sports. 

Below is an aerial view with current directions for sun rise (yellow line) and sun set (orange line) as of the summer solstice, June 21st. The thinner line represents the direction of the sun a little after solar noon that day (keeping in mind that due to daylight savings time, solar mid-day is actually 1:00pm CDT). 

Installed this way, over the coming months the sun should trace arcs from left to right, from one side of the cul-de-sac to the other with their house on the west side. Each day the sun will trace an arc a little higher until we get to the summer solstice after which the arcs traced will be lower and lower. 

An interesting facet of the installation of Kai's Solarcan is the basketball backboard in the foreground; see the view from the installed Solarcan below. The sun's path across the sky as we get late in the year may go just behind the backboard, outlining it in silhouette. 

Of course, the backboard won't be the only thing that blocks the sun's tracks on the solargraph. Some days will be overcast, with clouds completely blocking the sun, while other days will be partly cloudy with the sun's path on the solargraph appearing with gaps during periods when the clouds are covering it. 

To see the final result, now we just have to be patient!

Our plan is to leave it up until just after the winter solstice, probably taking it down and developing the image around Christmas. Once that's done, I'll post the final solargraph and what we learn from it. 

Stay tuned!

Click on images to enlarge.

 

A Night to Remember

When traveling to visit our friends who live in Palm Desert, CA, I packed the gear I could carry on a flight, opting for my travel tripod instead of a heavier Radian tripod and leaving the Star Adventurer tracker at home. My friend David had reserved a camp site for us for Mother's Day evening and his son-in-law Erik joined us. After setting up camp and enjoying the view as twilight ended, we hit the sack and set alarms.

My original plan was to do a multi-shot panorama of the full Milky Way arch. Unfortunately, when planning the shoot in PhotoPills (photo planning software), I had inadvertently scrolled forward a day so when my alarm went off instead of having a half-hour of moonlight to shoot the foreground and time enough to shoot the full arch while it was relatively low in the sky, I woke up up to a moonless sky and the arch already getting a bit too high for the shot I planned. Once I realized my mistake, I focused on just enjoying the view and getting a few decent shots including this one, taken with a Nikon D750 and an Irix Firefly 15mm f/2.4 wide angle lens.

My decision to go with B&W was in part because the sky colors were off and rather than do heavy edits to get a more natural look, I chose to take color out of the equation. My assumption about the colors I found when editing the raw image is that it perhaps had to do with the massive amount of dust in the air. That entire weekend, winds from San Bernadino south to the Salton Sea where blowing so hard that when we left Palm Desert Sunday afternoon headed to the campground, we couldn't see a mile down the road and could hardly see the mountains of Joshua Tree. At the campground at 3000 feet, the air was much clearer but the sunset that evening was orangish as was the light dome from Blythe that shows up in this image (which I also think was more prominent due to the amount of dust in the atmosphere).

The labels in this image were carried forward from a test shot done a few nights before taken at our friend's place above Palm Desert, an attempt to do some test shooting for the panorama that was thwarted by high, thin clouds. I had shared the one shot from that night where Scorpius was visible with friends, including similar labeling, so this version of this shot was labeled to relate the two images. See below for the unlabeled version plus a few other shots from the trip.

Click on any image to see enlarged.

The Milky Way over Joshua Tree National Park
(Light dome is Blythe, CA)

Low visibility leaving Palm Desert, CA

Sunset at Joshua Tree National Park

Cottonwood Campground Amphitheater

Campsite

Mountain Cloud Timelapse

A brief timelapse capturing a cloud formation building and blowing away over the Santa Rosa mountains south of Palm Desert just after sunset. Taken from base of the Cahuilla Hills off of CA-74. 

Down in the Coachella Valley, the winds were blowing heavy and dust bad enough to make seeing Joshua Tree to the north difficult.

More to come from our visit to Palm Desert...

Four Morning Planets, Part Duex

As mentioned in my last post, I am looking for additional opportunities to capture the parade of naked-eye planets across the morning skies this spring. Unfortunately, over the past two weeks, most mornings were overcast, whether in Dallas or Los Angeles, preventing me from seeing and shooting this unique event again. Sadly, that included even being able to see the close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus as they traded places in the parade. 

Thankfully, in Palm Desert things have been much clearer so a few days ago I was able to capture them again, this time with palm trees and Southern California mountains instead of oak trees and Lake Buchanan. I was also able to plan the shot, shooting earlier in the morning before the twilight glare made it so difficult to see them as in the prior post.