Time to take a break from global warming. Link to the full video follows.
Terje Sorgjerd writes:
This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3715m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.
See more videos on his website
h/t to WUWT reader “philincalifornia”
Magnificent!
that brought out the OMG Chorus – it was freakin amazing!
Earth is Beautiful
Beautiful! This video of the Aurora by same photographer is also amazing.
You should really mention, for the benefit of the credulous, that half the images in that video are faked, particularly the “Milky Way + sunset” ones. And who knows where the original shots were really taken.
REPLY: And, at least have the integrity to show some proof for your assertions anonymously disparaging another person’s work – Anthony
Run it again, but this time mute it and play Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod from Enigma Variations’. Not taking anything away from the original score, but Nimrod suits this video so well.
Beautiful colors!
Spectacular use of high-speed photography…the Vimeo link for me was jerky and the sound was broken up, but after retrieving it from the Temporary Internet Files cache I was able to view it in its full glory.
Earth is indeed beautiful, abounding in its ability to live for a long time…and this mountain in the Canaries is a not-so-mute testament to the dynamic Earth.
….and there is nothing fake about that! The opening scene is a Moonset.
As an astronomer and time-lapse ‘dabbler’ I really appreciate what he has achieved. In reply to ‘Braddles’ there may be an element of foreground/landscape manipulation and if it is it would be there to add effect (and achieved beautifully IMHO).
Wow! Just, WOW! A night on El Teide is now on my things to do before I die list.
That is beautiful. Thank you for bring this to us Anthony. For the benefit of braddles, Nothing in this video is fake, it maybe that 2 files have been merged to create an effect, but it is only through photography, and the vast majority of it armature that most people get to see how magnificent our physical world really is.
Braddles says: April 18, 2011 at 11:57 pm
You should really mention, for the benefit of the credulous, that half the images in that video are faked, particularly the “Milky Way + sunset” ones. And who knows where the original shots were really taken.
REPLY: And, at least have the integrity to show some proof for your assertions anonymously disparaging another person’s work – Anthony
I didn’t see a claim that they were captured in one pass.
The many orders of magnitude brightness difference between the sunset and the Milky Way would preclude getting that in a single shot. The low-light capability of his camera is amazing.
I certainly wouldn’t call them faked, though.
Lovely video Anthony. Braddles is talking tosh. The whole point of putting telescopes on top of mountains is because the viewing of the stars is good. The rest is down to exposure control. The video is speeded up but each frame has a long shutter time. Just needs a decent camera.
Stunning – Happy Eastertide
Another refreshing Norwegian video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/JokkeSommer
Especially
Braddles says:
April 18, 2011 at 11:57 pm
It is strange how someone managed to find something negative to say about this.
Ordinary warmista strategies at work? Even in a post like this?
@Braddles
Thats’s the point it’s a specific photographic technique, where you take the earth horizon shots and then superimpose time-lapse photography of the movement of stars etc.
I don’t think anyone’s trying to pass something off as not genuine. The fact of the matter is photographing the heavens versus earthbound scenes required vastly different exposure settings due to the available light. Even a rank amateur knows this.
Thank you Anthony and welcome to the Canary Islands!
You should see in this high areas (Valle Ucanca) when in May the unique “Tajinaste rojo – Echium wildpretii” flowers, really spectacular………you are just in time in planning your trip.
Why do people such as ‘Braddles’ snipe at something so lovely. As someone who has progressed over many years from my first rudimentary Kodak ‘Box Brownie’ through to excellent digital cameras and using Photoshop as a matter of course, the excessively mean-spirited ‘Braddles’ has missed the point of photographic creativity entirely and has not realised that there is no such thing as ‘real’ photgraphy. Incidentally, my favourite camera is my 1911 half-plate Thornton and Pickard, which is a lovely piece of furniture in its own right and has the very first patented shutter, fabricated from wood, cardboard, a rubber band and string!
That abomination Adobe Flash Player won’t even entertain playing HD video on a lowly laptop like this, so I downloaded the 720P version using Firefox & Download Helper, then played it with VLC, which does it perfectly.
I’m going to watch it on the TV later which should be really stunning. My only complaint is that it runs too fast – I slowed it down to half speed to enjoy it better, but that makes the sound track weird! The Aurora is excellent, as well.
This is in a similar vein, and may be of interest:
Braddles:
Milky Way and Sunset
Can you give a time in the video?
I see quite a lot of bottom lit cloud with a bright star field but I am not sure which bit you are querying. There will be light pollution from the other islands.
There is a sunset ~0:50 but that looks fine, as does the other ~2:40. Which sunset are you worried about.
Alex
Breathtakingly beautiful…..reminds me of what an extraordinary privilege it is to have been one of the myriad living organisms that have shared – and will share – transience on this incredible little blue marble in space.
Gorgeous, especially full-screen on my 27″ iMac.
Can’t even see a hint of the Milky Way here between Boston and Worcester. . . Sigh!
Thanks for posting.
/Mr Lynn
Just upgraded my old laptop(6 years old) yesterday to an ‘HD’ one, thanks for this link, it was beautiful!
Stunning. Thanks for sharing.
When I’m not using my PC I now have this set at full screen, looping. It is SO much better than any screen saver I’ve ever had. If I knew how I’d capture this and set it in an HD picture frame to run continuously instead of having a sequence of photos that it runs through.
@Braddles
“You should really mention, for the benefit of the credulous, that half the images in that video are faked, particularly the “Milky Way + sunset” ones. And who knows where the original shots were really taken.”
He writes about wanting to photograph the milky way, time lapse style, and he shows, wait for it, the milky way itself in all it’s glory, time lapse style, and not high flying cows spurting milk all the way to the stars.
Here’s thought take a hike and see the stars instead of inhaling to see stars. :p
I took the time to go outside and stargaze while in the Rockies a couple of weeks ago. Compared to a suburb in midwestern US, the sky was on fire. Don’t wait to go to a distant land while ignoring what is around you.
Braddles is right, Anthony. I do night sky photography, and the starry sky/sunset videos are physically impossible.
To the “faked” claims, it should be pointed out that the technology is readily available to enhance the images without “faking”, called High Dynamic Range imaging (HDR). It’s done all the time with stills, and to assemble a video from a series of stills would be tedious, but very doable.
I wouldn’t call the expansion of the contrast range faking at all. Ansel Adams did it in every one of his photos (burning, dodging, pushing or pulling the film), yet no one has ever suggested his work was faked. All that’s being done in this video, IF it’s being done, is expanding visually something that exists, not adding something that doesn’t.
Braddles says:
April 18, 2011 at 11:57 pm
==============
Awww Braddles, next you’ll be telling us that Lord of the Rings isn’t real !!!!
wow.
Just wow.
To Braddles, and Dr. Spencer, this is what he says on his website about the milky way sequence:
The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.
A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (bit.ly/g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.
Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.
With the right equipment, it seems plausible, and if you look at his equipment list he seems to have the “right stuff”.
A few years ago, it would be impossible. An aquaintance of mine, Kris Koenig, produced a series for PBS: 400 Years of the Telescope. He visited many of the worlds highest telescopes, and I’ve seen photography from him not unlike this.
NE Oregon is very much like this country. Thanks….
When I lived on the Oregon coast I hated that
thick, cloudy atmosphere….
OK, that makes more sense, Anthony…I stand corrected. TRULY AMAZING AND EXTRAORDINARY VIDEO. 🙂
The technique used is still photos (long exposure) with an automatic shutter (or computer controled one) to have them recorded at a specific frequency to get the flowing motion. Mandatory are the lenses quality (less than F2 is great for such work – above that you have to open the ISO and that creates noize). I have a wide angle F1.2 and it does the job pretty well.
That is one 5 to 10 seconds exposure every 8 to 10 seconds. About 3 to 6 photos/minute, at 30fps, you need 5 to 10 minutes of photos to get one single second of video. Could be more or less depending on the speed you want it to go and the results you want to achieve. Think about it … 2 minutes video = 3600 photos to capture, post-process, adjust, and turn into a video, and a lot of time in the field.
What he did is quite remarkable as it is a very long process to readjust the HDR multi-shots to get the expected results – many hours of post processing. That is the biggest job to do, but there are automated tools to batch process all of them a save days of manual work. Once you get all the single pics done (adjusted), you can use a standard video software like Pinnacle or Vegas pro to create the video (that’s the easiest part). I tried 24fps and 30fps.. Best results are with 30fps or more.
He’s also using a motorized device to get the moving angle at a regular pace. Think about it… He needs power for the Camera, the motorized device, the computer to control everything – he’s on a mountain. That’s a lot of stuff to carry at the mountain.
I did some experiments with time lapse photo based on a similar video/techniques i found last year on the net, using a Canon T2I (same goes for Nikon D series), and the result are really magical. But you have to be prepared for some serious post production work to achieve such results.
All that to say, it is a real piece of art he created, and comments like ”Braddles” are quite stupid when you know all the work behind such creation. Some people really don’t know how to appreciate what their blinded eyes cannot see anymore.
You don’t need to go that far to get dark sky and less light polution. Two years ago i was in Texas going from Abilene to Wichita falls – it is really dark at night on that road and there’s about no light pollution. Many places in the plains are like that and ideal site to do such video. But, if you just go out of town you can still achieve very good results.
“Anthony Watts says:
April 19, 2011 at 6:58 am
To Braddles, and Dr. Spencer, this is what he says on his website about the milky way sequence: ………………
………………With the right equipment, it seems plausible, and if you look at his equipment list he seems to have the “right stuff”.
A few years ago, it would be impossible…………”
I’m with Anthony on this one. I’m a photographer and amateur astrophotographer and the advances in DSLR cameras regarding high ISO and low noise in the last few years are nothing short of a quantum leap in technology. You still need very dark skies of course, and El Teide is has one of the best. That said a lot of post processing work still takes place. The saturation must be increased and dynamic range must be compressed quite a bit to enhance the contrast of the Milky Way for example.
The video is spectacular; however, this stuff is pretty commonplace these days. You can see a lot of them, including the video in question, and most with camera settings, etc. (click on video details) here:
http://wn.com/Time-lapse_Milky_Way
For a thorough explanation of why you can’t do this from your backyard downtown somewhere please look here:
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/L_STORY/SKYBRITE.HTM
And my latest night shot, from last December:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Landscapes/Scenics-2010/10935498_LwBYL#1133568172_TTuRc-O-LB
I used a tracking mount, small telescope and a Nikon DSLR – 30-second exposure.
Thanks for posting this Anthony!
Best,
Jose
Wow, this was a great find. It is amazing.
The contrast of the atmosphere with the Galactic Neighborhood is exceptional.
This is truly where we live.
Astounding!
Obviously a ton of work went into capturing the shots, particularly the start-studded shots and bringing them all together into a sequence. Great job.
We need a ‘scope on the moon.
Wow!
Prompted a (heavy) donation.
BTW, please clear (very) old comments held in moderation (only because …… &c., &c.)
For those who do not understand how this video was achieved, here is the information contained in comments by Terje Sorgjerd on the making of his time-lapse video ‘The Aurora’ from the Vimeo website:
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Lenses: Canon 24mm/1.4, Canon 16-35mm/2.8, Sigma 12-24mm
Video: 30 frames per second
Method: Converted the camera raw files to 16-bit TIFF in Adobe Lightroom; rendered the TIFF files in After Effects to 4k resolution 95% Jpeg, edited the 4K video in Final Cut, exported to 1080p h.264 using Compressor, uploaded to Vimeo.
12v 9800mAh CCTV battery powers the two motors and camera for 50+ hours.
I have scenes in here with as little as 1 second per exposure, but also scenes with 20seconds. As strange as it may sound, it is not the light that determine my exposure, but rather the speed of the aurora borealis. I want to recreate the motion as best as possible. You will see the northern lights move everything from very slow to blazingly fast.
I was a little bit worried about condensation, but I kept my gear outside at all times. And the air is very dry up here. Another problem I experienced was frost covering just about everything. For next time I will use some electric warming tape around my lens keeping it around -5C.
Dealing with flicker: I find the best way is to set absolutely everything to manual, even white-balance. If you do experience some minor flickers, use LR-Timelapse or similar tools to clean it up.
Video was shot using the 6 foot dolly from Dynamic Perception.
http://dynamicperception.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=26&zenid=e01ce2f7ef49f27b7c8598ee9e2b6d19
Shoot-Move-Shoot mode was used with the dolly, there is 814ms delay between the shots.
Doesn’t seem to be much faked in Terje’s videos.
Braddles and Roy Spencer,
Just enjoy the stuff, after all, EVERY photograph EVER taken is just a lie, a 3 dimensional scene changed into a 2 dimensional image !
Regg_up_north says:
April 19, 2011 at 8:22 am
Regg, I still have a Canon 7 fitted with an f 0.95 / 50mm. I did some fantastic work with that camera but unfortunately 35mm stock is getting a bit hard to come by in Hervey Bay.
I would love to find some way of fitting that lens to a modern digital body.
.
Absolutely stunning!!! Thank you.
Brings back memories of 2007, along the road between Maradah and Zillah, Libya, when I asked the driver to pull over and shut down at 2AM. Aside from the tinkle of cooling exhaust pipes, it was dead silent…and the sky looked as though you could touch it. It’s not hard to see how so many of the equatorial stars have Arabic names. I have a feeling I may never see something like that again.
@chris in Hervey Bay
Do some searches on Canon mount adaptors (or ers). You should be able to fit your lens to a DSLR (may not need to be Canon) although normally you’d expect to be in full manual mode. I have a couple of old film primes I use on my Pentax DSLR.
Patrick in Adelaide says:
April 19, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Thanks for the tip Patrick. You would have to see this mount to believe it. It is what you would call a “semi bayonet” mount, where the lens drops straight into the body and is secured with an external locking ring. Also the back element of the lens is very close to the focal plane / film plane.
It is a wonder someone has not made a universal CCD back that would just replace the film. Now that would be something ! Heaps of 35mm bodies put back into service.
I guess the lens will finish up as an expensive paper weight. Beautiful to look at but not much good for anything.
.
Patrick, Chris, it’s just not going to happen with the new 35mm digital sensor cameras, sorry. In fact, I’m probably going to have to upgrade/change all my lenses, damnit, if I buy a Canon (or Nikon) with a 35mm sensor.
Whatever, we can always enjoy our previous good ones:
http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/1013/3365turkeyvulture.jpg
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9965/1819b.jpg
Braddles says:
April 18, 2011 at 11:57 pm
You are totally bereft of a soul!
Terje, my humble thanks for re=opening an old mans eyes to the beauty that is available to us all should we make the effort to simply look! Stunning work!
philincalifornia says:
April 19, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Agreed Phil, at least I have the results that the 0.95 gave, now that I’ve been dragged into the digital age.
At 5 feet and at .95, the depth of field was about ¾ inch so that you could have eyes in sharp focus and the tip of the nose blurred ! Three candles was all that was needed to illuminate a large room. I used to specialise wedding cake cuttings with only a couple of candles for lighting. The magic soft red lighting was stunning. I would do those shots off a tripod at 60th sec at .95.
That was awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you have Dreamscene enabled in Vista or 7, a quick convert to .wmv format gives the most phenomenal desktop imaginable. 😉
Sure beats looking at the same picture day after day. 🙂