jeffwongdesign

Tag Archives: stars

A New Chapter

/ Me, Photo

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Proposal on top of Glacier Point at Yosemite on September 29th at 7:30pm.

Our universe has existed for nearly 14 billion years. The earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. Our specie has evolved for 200 thousand years, and civilization as we know it has been here for about 6,000 years.

I’m happy to be part of this cosmic timeline and explore this universe with Annie. To all my followers, thank you for being a part of this moment.

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Annie and I star gazing on a clear night.

It really was a magical evening — we got to watch the sun set over half dome and then we witnessed one of the clearest night skies I’ve ever seen. If you look closely in the photo above, you’ll see the Andromeda Galaxy. It was a perfect night for an engagement… and astrophotography!

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The milky way, completely visible with the naked eye.

The photo above is a portion of our Milky Way galaxy. I honestly didn’t do much retouching to this image. I simply took 9 photos, aligned them, and then did a median stack to reduce the noise. Then I bumped up the exposure two stops.

It was romantic, and I think Annie really enjoyed the scenery.

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The ring inside the box, with a small LED light.

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A close up of the engagement ring, lit with christmas lights on top of my Macbook Pro.

I know Annie likes her diamonds — and hopefully, she loves this one. ^_^

Milky Way Time Lapse (Fail)

/ Photo, Video

Unfortunately, the last two night skies have been filled with overcast. I’m actually surprised I was able to snag a photo of Andromeda.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it already, there’s a pretty cool video that shows the Andromeda galaxy in an amazing amount of detail. The fact that it’s over 2.5 million light years away blows my mind. I’m really hoping I get get a better picture of it in the future.

Andromeda Galaxy

/ Photo, Science

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Here’s a photo Annie and I shot of the Andromeda Galaxy last night. I was using my dad’s old 135mm f3.5… and the humidity took away some contrast… But overall, it’s a step in the right direction.

Oh yeh, the image was stacked using 18 photos shot at around ISO 256,000. There was a ton of noise, but by aligning, stacking and doing a median filter, I was able to get a cleaner image. It’s bonkers what software can do now-a-days. A couple of clicks, and bada-bing, a noise-free image.

I kind of wish I had a newtonian telescope with a star tracker. Oh could you imagine how sweet some of these photos would turn out?? One day… one day. ^_^

Hopefully we’ll get another clear this evening—I’m looking forward to grabbing a couple more snaps.

Milky Way Video at My Parent’s River House

/ Photo, Science

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I managed to snag a couple of photos of the night sky last week. The photo above is a still from a time lapse video I created.

It’s kind of funny that I bought my camera nearly two years ago, and I’m finally started to get the hang of astrophotography. I guess I finally figured it out after watching a ton of youtube videos and staring at people’s photos on 500px and Flickr.

Creating this actually wasn’t that hard… there was some trial and error over the last few years, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. A DSLR, fast wide angle lens, tripod, and Light Room + Premiere seemed to get the job done.

If you’re curious, the images were shot with the following equipment and settings:
Camera: Nikon D600
Lens: Nikon 24mm f1.4
ISO 2000
Shutter Speed: 15″
Interval shooting: 20″ per photo
Format: RAW

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Again, the photo above was pulled from one of the still photos I shot in a time lapse. It’s pretty amazing what our galaxy looks like. Any problem or issues we have here are so small and irrelevant compared to the vastness of our universe.

I’m really looking forward to shooting some more soon. Until then, enjoy some the test videos below:

I shot this one when the sun was setting. That’s why it was over exposed at the beginning. Also, my ISO was way too high.

And this one was pointed up at the sky. Again, my ISO was too high in this test. I managed to get a small glimpse of the milky way, and that fueled me to try again.

Check out some more milky way photos on Foo’s site.