Photo Friday: Full Moon Photography and some more Aurora

This is another late Photo Friday post published on the following Wednesday to confuse all of you! These pictures have, however, been taken on a Friday, so it’s at least partially right this time.As we’re getting more and more daylight, gaining some 20-30 minutes of daylight every day, the nights automatically get shorter, which also means that soon enough we will no longer see amazing stars or auroras. This also means that it’s almost the last moment to go out and take some of the night time shots before the ball of fire makes itself at home on the southern sky permanently for the antarctic summer season.

Because of all that, today’s pictures and a short video at the end are all taken in the dark.

Full Moon Landscapes

First, I’d like to show you a couple of pictures of the base surroundings, taken when the moon was full and the night was very crisp, cold and very still. These conditions allowed me to take pictures with this strange, wonderful light. There was a tiny bit of aurora going on to the South, which is a bit of a bonus as I couldn’t actually see it at the time.

For these pictures, I’ve set my camera to ISO400, f/4 at 15 seconds exposure, which is what the meter showed as correct exposure. All of those pictures were taken with the Nikkor 10.5mm Fish-Eye lens. Here’s the result of my work:

 Halley VI Station in the Full Moon's light Watching the sky from in front of Halley VI Halley VI Station in the Full Moon's light

Aurora Australis

We also had a good show of Aurora a few days prior to that. It’s the kind of show that will never cease to amaze me – I don’t think I can ever get bored with it.

That time, there was a really strong Aurora, which by the time I got out with my camera almost completely vanished. I’ve decided to set up anyway and leave the camera on time lapse for as long as the battery would last. I used my setup with an external battery and this time I’ve taken the normal batteries out of my camera, and I’ve left the whole setup for the night. I’ve used the in-built Interval Shooting mode, set so that the camera takes a picture every 20 seconds. Each exposure was 20 seconds long, at ISO400 and f/4.0, again all taken with the Nikkor 10.5mm Fish-Eye lens.

It was a mixed success, with the camera working most of the night but getting “jammed” at least twice in the process. Once it managed to “unjam” itself after a few hours, and the other time it got stuck completely and stopped shooting. I did manage to get a couple of hundred pictures, which made a few seconds worth of time lapse footage.

I’ve decided to edit in some earlier Aurora time lapse to make the whole video a little bit longer. I hope you don’t mind.

Following are a couple of pictures and the video. Enjoy!

Aurora over Halley VI Aurora on a cloudy sky over Halley VI

7 thoughts on “Photo Friday: Full Moon Photography and some more Aurora

  1. amazing starry night. i was trying to make out the constellations, but I think they are never visible from the Northern hemisphere. on top of that, they are upside down 🙂

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