Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
There’s a saying that goes “Smile, and the world will smile back”. In this case it was the universe that smiled back, as the Hubble Space Telescope photographed deep space galaxies.
The smiley in the photo appeared thanks to a cosmic lens which was created due to warped spacetime (English explanation below).
Photographed at least three years ago, The Hubble team processed the photo after the smiley face was spotted during a public contest.
Celebrating Israel Space Week, which started on Sunday, employees of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) had a group photo taken from space.
The photo, which depicted the company’s initials, was captured by the EROS-B (Earth Remote Observation System-B) satellite from a height of 520km (325 miles).
The 300 or so employees had to be at a specific location at a very precise time for the photo-op to work. Luckily, determining these factors was a piece of cake, as they are somewhat familiar with the satellite – they built it.
If you’ve heard of INSA, chances are you’re thinking of animated walls right now. For those who don’t know him (and you definitely should), INSA is famous for his stop motion GIF-ITI artwork – animated GIFs created from graffiti paintings.
The UK street artist recently created the biggest animated painting for another GIF-ITI project, but with two changes from his ordinary workflow. Rather than painting a wall INSA painted an entire parking lot, and instead of a regular camera he used a satellite to capture his creation!
Scheduled to be completed in 2022, the prized digital camera that will be part of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has recently garnered “Critical Decision 2” approval from the Department of Energy (DOE). Together with funding the telescope received in 2014 from the National Science Foundation, the DOE’s approval sealed the deal, as officials from LSST have confirmed the world’s most powerful camera will be completed on schedule.
Even if we do have to wait 7 years to see a photo from it, the camera is poised to be a revolutionary new pathway to space exploration. It will weigh in at just over 3 tons and will be similar in size to a small car–making it the world’s largest digital camera.[Read More…]
Twenty years ago NASA released an image which blew minds all over the world. Still regarded as one of the most popular space images to have been beamed to Earth, Pillars of Creation has recently been re-captured using Hubble’s latest imaging technology.
Astronomers and astrophotographers are over the moon about another incredible image captured by NASA/European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. The 1.5 billion pixel image, the largest ever released by Hubble, shows over 100 million stars.
During a 6-month long Blue Dot Mission aboard the International Space Station, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst took tens of thousands of photos. 12,500 of which were used to create this astonishing timelapse of earth from above. Periodically, Gerst would use an intervalometer to snap photos for him while he worked on other important tasks. Now, a little over a month since he returned to earth, the ESA has released the results of those sessions in the form of an ultra high definition timelapse video.
Viewers are treated to glimpses of earth and space taken from the rare perspective of space. Among some of the beautiful sights in the clip, there will be “auroras, sunrises, clouds, stars, oceans, the Milky Way, the International Space Station, lightning, cities at night, spacecraft and the thin band of atmosphere that protects us from space.”
It’s been forty five years since Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first two men to walk on the moon. The more unbelievable fact for us, however, is that apparently had cameras that could run at five hundred frames per second back then, as well.
For thirty seconds, the launch of Apollo 11 was filmed by a camera on location at 500 FPS. The ending result was a stretched out to about eight minutes, and gave us one of our sharpest looks ever at the launch of a spacecraft. Obviously, the content shown is a breathtaking sight on its own, but I really found myself focusing on the aesthetics of the video itself after a few repeat views. How amazing is it that we’re able to see footage this sharp, fluid, and clear from 1969? Shot originally on 16MM film, the film was spotlessly converted to HD for us to be able to view online. Check it out for yourself, and stick around for the commentary by Spacecraft Films‘ Mark Gray. For a video that lasts just under ten minutes, what you learn for nearly its entire duration is half of the enjoyment.
Seriously though. With just how expensive film should have been at that point, NASA must actually have been receiving sufficient funding back then.
We’ve all got that picture that we can only shoot once in a lifetime. With the upcoming meteor shower this week, that shot might even come for one of us then. So when you’re a photographer working for NASA, it’s safe to say that you’re not just limited to one once-in-a-lifetime capture.
That’s the kind of shots that Ron Garan takes, while working as a photographer for NASA. Back in 2011, he had the opportunity to capture how the Perseid Meteor Shower looks from space, onboard the International Space Station itself; in celebration of the Perseid’s return, the picture was just recently posted on NASA’s website.
“Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan’s perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust left from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is right of frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus.”
– A description of the photo from NASA
By the way, this isn’t an event only exclusive to North Americans or Europeans. People from all over the world will be able to witness it this week. With the Supermoon coinciding this week, you should probably check out a few articles online on how best to view it from where you live. We might not all get a change to photograph these lights from space, but we can still shoot that lifetime-worthy picture. All it takes is inspiration and the will to act on it.
And money for gear. But mostly inspiration.
Usually when we share something from the International Space Station (ISS) it is some awesome time lapse or incredible captures of earth and stars. Today however, our share is not as happy.
German Astronaut Alexander Gerst shows how the awful things we do on earth is seen from space, in a post and a tweet titled ‘My saddest photo yet ‘ Alexander shares a picture showing the rockets flying the the middle east skirmish (war?) in Gazza.[Read More…]
Up until not long ago getting a camera to space was a pretty big deal. With time we got cheaper cameras capable of taking decent footage, we developed lots of resources on getting a weather balloon up in space. So now taking aerial footage of earth from space is not such big of a deal. Unless of course, you are taking Walter White with you.
The team at tvtag wanted to make a viral video (which they did) so they loaded a bobble-head Walter White doll to go along with their gopro to space.
At the peak of Walter’s 6 hours journey Walt braved speeds of 95 mph, temperatures as low as -65F, and a maximum altitude of 85,000 feet (that is almost 26km for the metric folks).
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