lunar halo with jupiter

i wish i'd captured this, but i didn't.

this beautiful image of an ice halo around the moon, accompanied by beautiful jupiter, is brought to you by physicist and photographer jonathan shock, who has a wonderful habit of looking up at the sky.


click image to source or embiggen

want more? check out his other images of halos!
used with permission, so thanks, jon.

the manhattan beach project longevity summit

this is a playlist of videos i have not listened to yet... but am slowly working through them.



via next big future shared by jonathan shock

jupiter and its moons

like it? click it!
up on lycabettus hill on sunday, the night was getting darker and my sights started to wander to other bits of the view than the acropolis. it was then that jonathan shock offered to lend me his 300mm lens to try and capture jupiter.

well, i jumped at the chance and was thrilled to get a shot of the planet and its moons! (the second shot on this post)



that whet my appetite and on monday night, i mounted my little white on the 40D, set it on a tripod, hooked it up to the computer and started EOS utility's remote live view. i got the top shot with this setup, which is not too shabby.

inside the téléphérique

like it? click it!
i was very pleased to meet up with my friend, jonathan shock, in athens today. a mixture of friends and family enjoyed a kebab lunch, coffee and a visit to lycabettus hill to take pictures of the acropolis at sunset.

you can walk up the hill, i guess, and supposedly you can drive as well... but we took the ride on the téléphérique, or cable car, which is accessed from kolonaki. there are two small cars, dodging each other midway, that climb the slanted tracks for a short ride up (or down, as the case may be). the tunnel is painted blue and the light and dark alternated beautifully.

i placed this image on the map.

the milky way over milos

click pic to source

captured by globetrotter, jonathan shock. more great shots over at his blog...

solar eclipse in wuhan, 22nd july 2009

my friend, jonathan shock, traveled all the way to china to see the solar eclipse in july. he captured quite a few wonderful images. this beautiful series of shots was compiled into a video by me!



jonathan's post is here.

the music is by a band i once listened to, live, in a bar in beijing... their name is porcelain. they kindly gave us a CD with their work... unfortunately, i haven't found them online.

lunar halo over santiago de compostela

as captured by sky watcher extraordinaire, jonathan shock:



thanks, jon!

unweaving the ice crystal halo

click to see all four shots
'after sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. within decades we must close our eyes again. isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? this is how i answer when i am asked—as i am surprisingly often—why i bother to get up in the mornings.' - richard dawkins, unweaving the rainbow: science, delusion and the appetite for wonder

(about the book, dawkins says: my title is from keats, who believed that newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colors. keats could hardly have been more wrong, and my aim is to guide all who are tempted by a similar view, towards the opposite conclusion. science is, or ought to be, the inspiration for great poetry.)


click to see all four shots
it pays for people to know your personal obsessions. i woke up late yesterday morning and started puttering around the house, internet and flickr, minding my own (and the world's) business, when i got an urgent call to rush outside with the camera to capture an ice crystal halo, specifically a circumscibed halo!

i spent about an hour outside from about noon to just past 1:00, trying to find spots to see the halo entirely and a decent post to hide the sun itself... but in vain. i resorted to using my lens cap.

EDIT: i just got word from les that he's going to feature these this week on atmospheric optics' picture of the day!

i've sent these over to les cowley at atmospheric optics, a website which analyzises rainbows, halos, glories, coronas, rays and shadows -- anything to do with light in the atmosphere -- to get an idea of the structure of the halo. i also had a chat with my friend, jonathan shock, who believes this halo includes a infralateral arc and a parhelic circle.

i had captured another halo in beijing in january 2008. its set on flickr is here and its 'anatomy' is here.

jonathan has some wonderful captures himself: two over santiago and one thrilling specimen over the eiffel tower!

solar halo over santiago -- again

leave it to jonathan shock to keep an eye on the skies of whatever part of the globe he happens to be at, and take brilliant pictures of anything funny going on there. today, for example, he captured a breathtaking ice halo over santiago:


click pic to larger size on flickr
more pictures and information at his blog!