...of Christmas and Musings

Christmas made me realize how "small" our family is and we're not even complete during the noche buena. My grandma decided to go back to her province on the 24th due to an errand, my aunt on the other hand spent her Christmas at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa "seriously" while her son had a conference in Malacañang. Thank goodness my dad's youngest brother had no other plan but to celebrate Christmas in their house so we got to visit and celebrate noche buena with his kids.

Anyway, before we went to my uncle's house, we got to visit Ayala Center for their spectacular lights but I didn't know Symphony of Lights isn't actually located in Ayala Center but in Ayala Triangle Gardens rather. So stupid of me. I should've taken much beautiful night-photos in there. I guess I'll try to visit the place before this year ends.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :)

Geminid Meteor Shower (12/14-15/2011)

I should have posted this right after the event but usually it goes to my facebook account first.

Anyway, since I've gone interested in astrophotography, I regularly visit NASA's calendar of space events and have read about the Geminid meteor shower. The Geminid meteor shower will be visible in the Americas at Dec. 13 to 14 and Dec. 14 to 15 around Asia and Australia.

Cloudy between 22:00-1:00. Waited for about 3 hours to get a clearer sky. Around 2:00, clouds began to disperse and stars are becoming visible. Set the camera with the following settings: Moon was taken earlier in evening 20:00-21:00 with aperture not too narrow around f/5.8, ISO 80, and exposure time of 1/200 (fast enough to capture the moon's detail, this is where I went wrong my first try). About the stars, totally different setting. Aperture is not too wide around f/3.0, ISO 400, exposure time of 15 to 30 seconds, varying. Out of 200+ star photos I've captured, I was only able to get 2 decent Geminid photos but it was worth the wait. Activity ended approximately 5 in the morning.

“You only get one shot at life. Why waste it on sleep?” - Gustav Graves

Lunar Eclipse - Time Lapse (12/10/2011)

Just want to share this one I did last night using an improvised intervalometer for time lapse, an old TI Graphing calculator. I'm gonna post a tutorial on this probably later on Instructables.

Took photos of the eclipse last night for 2 hours. This is a 4-minute time lapse of the lunar eclipse. Consecutive frames are around 7.5 minutes apart.

La Sardina in Black and White (35mm, ISO 200)