Dirty Skies

Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

I grabbed the camcorder last night and went out to watch the launch of NASA’s Kepler Telescope from my front yard located about 150 miles west-southwest of the Cape Canaveral. To my eyes the engine glow was quite red (atmospheric effect?). It was very clear and dark so there is nothing in the way of skyglow to put the image in perspective. I zoomed out and fiddled with the gamma a bit to try and give some.

At any rate, here it is. This was definitely one of those launches that looked ALOT better to the maked eye from my location and didn’t transfer well to video.

NASA’s Kepler Launch (from my front yard) 
(launches on YouTube in a new window)

 If you missed the NASA TV coverage, I’ve mirrored it here.

I was browsing the Mars Exploration Rover Mission Website and took a look at the latest Flight Director’s Update video entitled “Jan 17: It’s the fourth anniversary of the Mars Exploration Rovers.”

It’s a nicely produced little piece that is more of an overview of the mission (for those of you that have been living under a rock) than a true update. Nonetheless I though it was interesting.

See it here.

Via a somewhat convoluted surfing route I stumbled across this cool time-lapse movie of the Moon coming out of the recent eclipse and setting at dawn over San Francisco!

Just thought I’d share. Anyone else find “accidental imagings” of the event?

This past Saturday they had a night launch of the shuttle (Discovery STS-116). I was on my way off to work but I delayed 15 minutes to bring the video camera outside and catch it. There were some hazy clouds near the horizon that weren’t visible to me until illuminated by the launch. I’m about 150 miles from the space center as the crow flies, so any launch from there takes about 10-15 seconds to clear my horizon and come into view.

I’m sure you’ve all seen amateur video of small objects moving against the sky and mumbled to yourself “Why couldn’t this idiot keep the camera still and in focus?” Well, mostly-still wasn’t too hard but the focus? …Sheesh! I tried to keep some foreground objects in the frame but it didn’t help much. My next camcorder is going to have a manual focus option if such a thing exists!

Here’s the video from my front yard. Watch it HERE (5.7 MB).

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view this movie file.

For some really spectacular on-scene photos visit For the Birds: Night Launch

I have the next 4 nights in a row off so I hope to finally see first light on the new scope. Keep your fingers crossed.