Recent Work: Astronomy, April 8 2022
Planetary Alignment of Mars, Saturn, and Venus
I went out one morning hoping to shoot what I had read about as a planetary dance. You would have had to go out each morning to capture the sequence as they dance around each other and the moon. Above, Venus is the top left, Saturn the bottom right, and Mars completes the triangle on the right. This will continue until they have joined a line to be joined by Jupiter in May and Mercury in June.
Milky Way over Manitoba
On the same evening as the planetary alignment above, I realised while doing my research that if I went just an hour earlier, I would have some time with the Milky Way. I left early in the morning to make it on location by 4:30 am. I would have at most two hours of shooting time. Towards the end, I found that I was constantly changing my exposure settings as I raced against the rising sun.
One evening I went chasing the aurora with my friend Yuri. We changed our location plans several times due to clouds, often adjusting pulled over on the side of the road. The transition was seamless. Turning off the highway onto gravel for the last 2km, the clouds disappeared revealing the aurora above. We were treated to an hours long show.
Earthshine
Finally, I have been planning on shooting some earthshine - the illumination of the shadowed side of the moon caused by Earth reflecting light out into space. I read April and May were the best months to observe it, so I will be playing around with this a bit.