Blog
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April 18th, 2010
ð°ï¸ - Space Shuttle Discovery (more…)Flyby of the Space Shuttle Discovery over Germany during the mission STS-131. Shortly before the end of NASA's space shuttle program, I managed in April 2010 to film the space shuttle on its approach to the ISS with the payload bay open. Both objects moved many degrees apart from each other in tandem across the sky above Germany on that day.
Date: April 18th, 2010 @ 04:56:51 CET
Author: © Christoph Rollwagen
Camera: ImagingSource DMK 41AU02.AS
Lens: 1000mm GSO Newton Reflector f/5
Location: Brielow near Brandenburg an der HavelJuly 22nd, 2009
ð¨ð³ - Longest Solar Eclipse of the 21st century in China (more…)On July 22nd, 2009, the umbral shadow of the moon was supposed to move across China, covering many million people's cities and the multi-million metropolis Shanghai in darkness for several minutes. On eclipse day, at the site of the longest duration of this total solar eclipse, some 2000 kilometers east of the Chinese coastline in the East China Sea, several cruise ships were stationed, whose passengers expected a totality of almost 6 minutes and 39 seconds. This eclipse was supposed to reach the longest totality duration of all eclipses in the 21st century.
I flew to Shanghai with several friends, experienced the overwhelming city life of the fascinating Chinese population for a few days and continued my journey to the southwest in a rented minibus towards Anji, a city about 200 kilometers away, at the foot of the Tianhuangping Mountains. Anji appeared to be a convenient observation site because the centerline of the eclipse ran only a few kilometers north of it with a duration of totality of 5 minutes and 48 seconds. In addition, unlike the metropolitan area of ââShanghai, visual impairments due to possible smog exposure could have been largely ruled out there. On the day before the eclipse, we experienced the hottest day in the region for 170 years in a largely cloudless sky and at about 40 degrees in the shade.
But already in the week before, the weather prediction, which became more reliable now day by day, showed, that during the eclipse we would most likely see rainy weather conditions. Also on the evening before the eclipse day, the forecast was extremely bad. For almost the entire path of totality through China temperatures of well over 30 degrees, strong thunderstorms and heavy rain were predicted. We therefore decided to spontaneously search for an alternative observation site and head to the southwest in our minibus, which we had rented for this case, to escape from the thunderstorm coming from the northeast.
Our driver Mister Wang, who was informed about our new plans with a spontaneous translation service of the hotel lobby staff, was waiting outside the hotel after midnight and drove us into the mountains early in the morning. We hoped to cross the highest ridge of the mountains and find the best viewing conditions on the lee side in the morning. During the ride it was raining a bit, in the north we could see the flashes of approaching fierce thunderstorms. An unexpected roadblock forced our driver to change onto a highway.
We crossed the ridge, the rain subsided and dawn set in. We barely trusted our eyes as we recognized blue sky through the morning haze. During the night drive, I refined the script for the software, which was to run the fully automatic exposure series of my cameras in the morning. Using the automation software, that I had applied successfully a year before in Russia, I made sure that on the one hand I could observe the eclipse undisturbed and on the other hand at the same time and at the right moment I would be able to take the largest possible amount of photos of various exposure times of all eclipse stages. The software also allowed me to spontaneously calculate the totality duration to be expected for the current location via GPS signal while driving through the shadow zone. This was necessary as we gradually moved away from the eclipse centerline, thus losing totality duration with every kilometer driven. We decided to follow the road as long as we were still within the 4-minute zone.
When that limit was crossed, we left the freeway and followed a country road, which led us back a bit towards the centerline. On a slightly overgrown parking space near the city of Jixi in Anhui Province, we finished our night ride after sunrise and set up our observation equipment as the haze of the past rainy night dissolved and the sky gradually cleared up above us.
To capture the eclipse photographically I used a 432mm William Optics Megrez 72FD Apochromat f/6 with a Baader ComaCorrector on a Canon EOS 50D and a 1000mm MC MTO-11CA Maksutov f/10 mirror telephoto lens on a Canon EOS 300Da. I used Baader AstroSolar solar filter foil ND=5.0 as a solar filter for the partial phases. The two cameras were both attached on a double mount on an automatic tracking Astro5 mount. Each one has been connected to a separate netbook on which the software Eclipse Orchestrator ran the automatic exposure programs.
In the first partial phase of the eclipse, from time to time denser clouds and haze moved through the field of view, but the increasingly crescent-shaped sun never completely disappeared fromour sight. I responded to the changing visibility conditions and adjusted the exposure times by spontaneously editing the exposure script.
The landscape darkened minute by minute and the umbral shadow noticeably approached us from the west. In the last minutes before totality, we realized that at the right moment a big hole in the clouds opened up above us, which allowed a largely unrestricted view of the eclipsed sun, the mighty corona and some stars in the darkened sky. The air was still warm and slightly hazy. Suddenly in the surrounding nature a surprisingly loud cricket and cicada concert started. With the diamond ring effect, the world around us sank into darkness. In the binoculars I admired some prominences and the rare sight of the corona. The ongoing clicking sounds of the shutters of my cameras assured to me that the anticipated photos of the solar corona would be taken without any problems. For more than 4 minutes and 20 seconds, we experienced an intense and very long total solar eclipse.
When the first direct sunlight returned, we realized that countless tiny clouds were forming in the sky above us. Because the sun appeared as an almost punctiform source of light during the second diamond-ring effect and through the refraction effect of the tiny droplets of water within the clouds, a magnificent rainbow-colored aureole showed up in saturated and intense colors that I have never seen before this way. I also noticed that in the meantime the battery charge of one of my cameras was completely exhausted and the device did not make any more photos. I changed the battery, but feared that the camera could have failed during totality already. On the ride home, I browsed through the photographic harvest on my memory card and was delighted to see that all the major eclipse phases and phenomena have been recorded in high quality and with a good focus. Only a few of the scheduled shots in the first minutes of the second partial phase were lost due to the empty battery. However, this time window has been captured by the second camera without interruption.
Later I created from the prepared photo and video material a very detailed HDR view of the solar corona on the computer, followed by several time-lapse videos, panoramic pictures of the landscape, a view of the darkened eclipse sky and stabilized zoom captures of the corona. Many of these views I assambled into a documentary that makes it possible to view different perspectives of the event at the same time in one video. The film begins about 3 minutes before the second contact and ends about 4 minutes after the 3rd contact.
The subsequent evaluation of satellite images of the cloudiness in the region at the time just before and shortly after the totality showed, that the chosen observation site was an absolute stroke of luck. Almost all other locations in the nearer and farther surrounding did not allow a view of the eclipsed sun due to the clouds. In the arae of Shanghai, it was raining heavily during totality. Later, we met a friend in the gigantic harbour city and heared from him, that he had experienced the eclipse close to the centerline at Jiaxing for nearly 6 minutes in pouring rain and that he had to flee under the protective roof of a gas station. For us, renting a minibus for an emergency case had paid off big time.
Date: July 22nd, 2009
Author: © Christoph Rollwagen
Cameras: Canon EOS 50D, Canon EOS 300Da, Canon Legria HD200, Sony DSC-P8 and others
Location: between Konglingcun and Qiantan near Jixi/Huangshan (Anhui province)
June 24th, 2009
ð©ðª - Astronomy Picture of the Day (more…)It is one of the greatest honors for an astrophotographer when a self-produced photo is being declared as an 'Astronomy Picture of the Day' (APOD) and published on the correspondent NASA/MTU website. With this capture of extraordinarily bright Noctilucent Clouds over Potsdam I succeeded that goal on June 24th, 2009. APOD is a popular website that presents a different image of the universe every day and is accessed by countless users worldwide.
In the lower part of the picture you can see the shadow cast of me and my camera caused by the full moon rising in the background.
Date: June 23rd, 2009
Author: © Christoph Rollwagen
Exposure: 30 sec on ISO100
Camera: Canon EOS 300Da
Lens: 28mm Tamron AF XR Di LD f / 5,6
Location: Potsdam-Bornstedt