Stars Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on August 9, 2020August 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Comet Neowise High Magnification

This is my last image of the Comet Neowise this time around. In 6800 or so years, I’ll get it next pass. It is traveling on a big loop around our sun. The bluish ion tail points straight away from the sun. The curved tail of debris off the nucleus is spewing off the curved race track the comet is on. This like so many chunks of gravel from a race cars wheels. Mr. Newton would be pleased to understand that his laws still seem to work. I estimate the light from this comet took about 6 minutes to get to my lens. It was far far away. At .7 Astronomic Unit’s distant from earth, it’s almost as far away as the sun itself when I took this. It is quickly getting further away and is only visible with good gear now. . 📷

Mostly I worked this comet with medium to wide lenses. I did however pull out a big gun for about 30 minutes. First of all let me say, This is a big aperture terrestrial lens (about 6 inches) and very fast at F4. Focal equivalent of 600mm. And I got about 6 seconds of exposure at ISO 3000. Any longer of an exposure and you’ll get long star streaks. I really should have tracked the stars and done minute long exposures at f200. Coulda Shoulda Woulda and all that. I keep pretty busy when I get a once in a lifetime opportunity with such clear dark skies. 👁

Tough to get set up as it was a little windy, big lenses have a high wind profile. A tiny wiggle ruins the image. I couldn’t even see the comet in the viewfinder. I was aiming blind literally. Set the camera in the general direction, take a photo, realign the camera and try again. This took 4 attempts to get it entirely in frame. If you look carefully you can see the tree line at about a mile distant from my camera. Close far perspective lololol.

No more Neowise. 😔

Title: Comet Neowise High Magnification

Posted on July 30, 2020July 22, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wandering Out of the Woods

This is a hybrid technique photo of the Comet Neowise. Here seen stumbling out of the woods. He was lost in there for a while while I was driving to get to this remote location. At least it’s going downhill and after a rough few weeks around the “celestial block” , it obviously needed the gravity assist. Only a three mile diameter ball of ice/rock/dust. They are more like a big hard snowball with some gravel mixed in for good measure. Anybody ever get into one of those snowball fights? Boys growing up do funny things. Survived too…

The lighting here at “Look out Butte” is my way of “painting with light” before the camera. Used a flashlight to systematically bathe the landscape with light from the led’s. Then I tapped my brake lights a few times for just that tint of red in the otherwise brown grass. With a flashlight you highlight what you want. Learning how much to use is the trick here. I corrected for overexposure in the digital darkroom. I tried several different colored flashlights as well. Interesting variations on a theme. I have yet to work on those. Hybrid as I said. Lots of work to get the lighting right with multiple attempts each slightly different. Fun exercise with this often taken comet these days. Challenging.. 😄 📸

Photographic Musings:

Those far trees are at least 200 yards out. 20 second time exposure. f4 lens. 22mm ISO (what ever it takes). F18. Tricky with pointing flashlights over 20 long seconds of open shutter. I hit the Snag twice intentionally with the thumb switched Surefire Flashlight. Made it stand out as planned. I can as I do it keep track where I’ve exposed to LED light mentally. One has to sort of wing it to do this. Wish I could explain better but my memory works in strange ways with images. I’m shooting this out of my Raptors drivers window mounted tripod. (Clamp) It has to be a calm night to do that in a vehicle. The wind profile of a Ford Truck is “enough”. Otherwise a sandbagged tripod is needed sometimes lol.

This spot is about 100 yards from the exact Montana/Wyoming border. 45 degrees north Latitude. Significantly close to 1/2 way between the North Pole and the Equator. This image is looking across that border. Almost straight north at this capture.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Wandering Out of the Woods

Posted on July 27, 2020July 21, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Hide and Seek with a Comet

Can you find the Comet??? It’s a big comet plus it is in the photo….👀

Here I caught Comet Neowise trying to hide. I consider myself a landscape photographer…. Images in my mind of mountains and Waterfalls come to mind. Instead I get trees with their own mystical ways of trying to conceal others around them. The comet knowing this, took full advantage to hide from your faithful photographer. In all honesty this is supposed to be a naked eye comet but hiding apparently is a Cometary tendency…. 😜

Using time exposures at night is an interesting pursuit if not outside my preferred work environment. Backcountry at night is an entirely different type of travel. Of course I have excellent lights on the Raptor but they tend to overpower with long time exposures. Instead I used a small handheld flashlight over 20 seconds and hand painted the trees with light. Sweeping over trees I wanted highlighted several times with the beam over that interval. Places I wanted dark, I didn’t sweep the light across so much.

The two dead trees (one standing and the fallen soldier below) were killed when this steep hill side slumped/slid about 20 feet shearing off their deep roots killing the trees. The jumbled surface around them still less than a century old, testifies to the earths inexorable movement toward the ultimate sink, the sea. The newspaper headline reads: Neowise Comet Hiding over Century old Landslide lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Hide and Seek with a Comet

Posted on July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Windmill Watching Comet Neowise

This full color image taken just outside the north fence of our homestead here in the Montana/Wyoming borderlands. Best tail of a comet I’ve ever taken and I’ve done a few over the decades back to Halley’s Comet in the 1980’s. The surprise Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 is it’s official designation. IT is a naked eye comet in this dark sky environment. Enjoy it as it’s not coming back for another 7000 years. So this will have to do. Let me know what it looks like next pass around the sun. It’s a big one with a 3 mile diameter nucleus. The orange tail totally took me by surprise. I could barely see the windmill in the viewfinder as this presented as pretty much a black screen with a few blotches on it lol. Focusing by instinct really.

I suggest about 3 AM though this was taken around 3:45 AM. I was “working” the comet after doing photography yesterday afternoon AND last sunset. It’s been a pretty short night. I might take a nap today…… Doing night photography is a whole different animal I point out. Not having light makes for a host of issues you have to deal with inside the camera and outside.

Photographic Musings:

With a long lens (this zoom was set to 300mm. Now the hard part with no light, is that turning your shutter speed to 10 seconds makes it VERY hard to focus precisely. Some “messing around” and testing the waters is necessary. Also there has to be some extra camera sensitivity (ISO) to boost the already silly low amount of light coming into the camera. A really good challenge.

Close / Far perspectives are complex during the daylight. This is a 10 out of 10 difficulty image requiring a tripod, proper shutter settings, not too high an ISO and enough F-stop to be able to focus BOTH close and far objects. Razors edge stuff… My lighting source are the low beams on my Ford F-150 Raptor. The LED light bar was TOO bright for the foreground without fogging out the background. So just a little ground light with a 10 second exposure. Any longer shutter with this long focal length, your going to get motion blur on the stars and Comet. To say this was a challenge would be an understatement. I didn’t think I had enough depth of field (focal depth) to pull it off. Got lucky I guess. Good luck trying this.

I have a few more nights to potentially work this comet. It’s all about the cloud cover. Normally I am at least 7 – 10 days out from taking a photo to publishing. This was taken this morning. Front of the line lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Windmill Watching Comet Neowise

Posted on April 29, 2020April 22, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Two Windows in the Storm

A busy time lapse photo from a good camera on a steady tripod set up under the awning of my homesteads deck. The lighting you see is ambient inside our “compound” from various yard lights accumulated over 10 seconds…. The storm provided a 500 microsecond extreme flash giving me internally illuminated clouds. As the storm travels, it’s leaving stars in it’s wake in the pure dark sky. Got em!

Photographers notes:

Basically combining Time Lapse and Flash Photography .

This is not a composite in fact the bright star is actually a planet… Jupiter. The flash of the lightningwas instantaneous but the stars needed the 10 second time exposure. The results fit like a glove 📸. About 10 seconds at ISO 300 with f6 (ish) should get you close if you have a tripod, and a storm that leaves stars in it’s wake… Pouring rain (see dark areas)..

I wonder how long I can expose stars without streaking? 🤔🤔👀📷

500 divided by the Focal Length of your Lens = The Longest Exposure in seconds) before Stars “start to trail”.

For example; let’s say you’re taking a shot with a 24mm lens on a full frame camera. 500 / 24 = 21 seconds, which you can round to 20 seconds. Use the rule, it works. Hope this helps you avoid streaks unless you WANT them lolol. I think longer the better for that to taste…😜

Have a great Wednesday night all and be safe.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Two Windows in the Storm

Posted on February 16, 2020February 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Moon Rise in Pitch Black

Moon Rise in Pitch Black (This is the Moon NOT the sun AND full Screen is a Must).

Moony Alpenglow I’m thinking. This is a 20 second long time widefield exposure with the camera aperture at low f-numbers (wide open). ISO is less than 1000 for this. High ISO is an evil thing in night time exposures.

I don’t do much work late at night as I do photography all day so there has to be a nap time somewhere. On the occasional night when I’m up over a mile away from my door up on Ridge 1 late at night, I usually bring a tracker along. Set up on Polaris. Takes a few minutes usually. Your camera mounts right to the tracker. 300 -400 bucks on amazon.

Rule of 600 in Star Photography:

The rule states that the maximum length of an exposure with stars that doesn’t result in star streaks is achieved by dividing the effective focal length of the lens into the number 600. A 50mm lens on a full sized sensor camera, therefore would allow 600 / 50 = 12 seconds of exposure before streaks are noticeable. That is unless you are using a device that moves the camera the same rate as the stars move. These “trackers” are a fairly inexpensive gadget but you do have to understand how to find Polaris (North star). Then you can take sharp stars over long intervals instead of getting lines from them moving.

Of course 20 seconds with a wide open iris totally overexposes the moon. That was the point. I wanted to see the moony Alpenglow it was projecting even faintly visible to my naked eyes lolol.

Location Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Moon Rise in Pitch Black

Posted on October 20, 2019November 16, 2019 by Bliss

Thunderhead Lit Up Trailing Stars Behind

“Thunderhead Lit Up Trailing Stars” is a time lapse photo on a tripod set up under my deck. All the lighting you see is ambient inside our “compound” from various yard lights mulitiplied over 10 seconds…. The storm is a 500 microsecond lightbulb flash giving me lit clouds from within. As the storm travels, it’s leaving stars in it’s wake in the pure dark sky. Got em!

Photographers notes:

This is not a composite in fact the bright star is actually a planet… Jupiter. The flash was instantaneous but the stars needed the time exposure and the results fit like a glove📸. About 10 seconds at ISO 300 with f6 (ish) should get you here if you have a tripod, and a storm that leaves stars in it’s wake… Hint…. Longer than about 12 seconds gives you streaky stars…..

Have a great Sunday night all.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on October 13, 2019October 5, 2019 by Bliss

Comet 46P and 2 Geminid Meteors from Dec 2018

It’s not too often I get out my 12 inch Meade LX-200 (100 pounds assembled), with a Sony Alpha 7RII attached to the 1600 mm setup (widest) December 2019, in the cold and snow. When I do, it will be chasing comets I can resolve…. This one was sort of my Naked eye visible but this is a several minute time exposure at a low ISO tracking with the polaris aligned big fast scope.

The comet is the big blob just above center. It’s coming right at you so it is a bright nucleus surrounded by the tail which is trailing exactly behind the core.

Comet 45P/Honda–Mrkos–Pajdušáková is a short-period comet discovered by Minoru Honda December 3, 1948. It is named after Minoru Honda, Antonín Mrkos, and Ľudmila Pajdušáková. The object revolves around the Sun on an elliptical orbit with a period of 5.25 years.

I actually photographed Halley’s comet extensively back in 1986 when it came by the earth on its long period of every 75 years. 2061 is a long time away. I have a print on the wall but I’ll be durned if I know where the negative is lol.

My skies are darker now but I don’t shoot a lot of night stuff so this is sort of a rarity for my camera time. I do this kind of stuff just a few times a year if I can work it in. Just have to sleep sometime lol.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on October 7, 2019September 30, 2019 by Bliss

Burgler Caught on Game Trail Camera

I run a network 26 Game Trail Camera (s) and I caught this burglar the other night. You would be amazed at the quality I can tweek out of some of the cameras. This is a 30 megapixel B+W version at midnight during a new moon (no light). Amazing stuff from the technology. Pitch black. Good capture. I have about 15 of this kind of camera up and running. I won’t endorse any of them though as they all do something different. Different tools all.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

I took out the “White eye” effect from the Infra-red light used here in the digital darkroom. I hope that doesn’t offend you. I remove stuff like that because they are artifacts of the technology, not the way the scene would have looked to me . (I probably could see the back of my hand in that light lolol).

Yup, those are stars in the sky. It’s as dark up in this remote part of the borderlands of Wy/Mt as the north Atlantic Ocean according to NOAA published maps.
Seeing stars on game trail cameras? He had to be absolutely frozen still when this shot went off or he would have blurred. This is a fairly long exposure. No question he was a statue frozen by the sound of the camera setting up lolol.

Location: way out in the backcountry, Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Posted on October 5, 2019September 28, 2019 by Bliss

Mesocyclone Veiling a Full Moon with a Bolt from the Storm

This Mesocycone was Veiling the full Moon enough to catch the stars visible to my naked eye but seldom to a camera pointing at the full moon. Most you see are fakes or composites. This 6 second time exposure would have been overexposed badly with a full moon that was unveiled. This is the real deal seeing stars with a full moon.

Straddling South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, this storm was 100 miles across. I photographed it in the deep backcountry for almost 2 hours with 6 different camera lens combinations from before sunset to well into Astronomic twilight under the full moon. Being backcountry means any light on the terrain is ambient from the flash and the moon/stars.

THe colors are way saturated which is what time exposures do. I actually really dampened down the purples in this image.

This ranks as one of my personal favorite images of the year. There are a few others….🤔

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Posted on September 27, 2019September 24, 2019 by Bliss

I Give you the Sun with the Moon and Stars (Orion in full color)

Give you the Sun with the Moon and Stars (Orion in full color). In Full Disclosure : This of course is a compilation/composite of 3 different images. The full color Orion is harder to do than you might think lol. The other two images were pieces of cake by comparison. This is ART from photographs taken at:

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on September 17, 2019September 14, 2019 by Bliss

Painting with a Violet Laser into Orion’s Chest

I took this at 4:30 Saturday Morning. I was painting Orion’s Chest with a high powered violet laser. It’s all about painting with light in reality. The orange is from the sodium vapor light on the lodge, the green from an LED light over 100 yards away in the barnyard. This is a 10 second time lapse, tripod mounted shot.

I’m just having fun at 4:30 AM lolol.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on September 2, 2019September 3, 2019 by Bliss

The Transition from AstronomicTwilight to Nautical Twilight

From 5:15 AM this morning. I wanted to get the transition from Astronomic Twilight to Nautical Twilight. Got it. Hoping for some residual aurora….nope…. Having said that, you might want to take this full screen…..

Orion is just touching “Sneaky Pete”, whirling places…getting a little trim perhaps. The red star touching the blades…..is Betelgeuice which is a red giant sun….. A familiar constellation for winter but you have to get up pretty early to see it rise Aug/Sept.

:).

FOR sure I’m overloaded with this to do. I will stop at 5 posts here this morning. A few forums….

We have a “ticket” into facebook trying to resolve an issue for my commercial webiste. Still bugs and complexity in abundance…patience…………. Waiting on FB tech to respond. Having said that…. it’s still an overload situation lololol. Just 5 images a day for a while…..

🙁

Have a great day all,