A few dynamic challenges...

Everybody knows that the Universe is dynamic. Even absolute beginners immediately recall the day/night sequence, the ever-changing lunar phases, the year's seasons, etc. The Universe has its own time-scale though. In fact, if one excludes meteors and the totality phase of solar eclipses, all other sky events may be considered rather slow.

An increasing number of software packages does allow us to accelerate sky events, but the fact is that reality is hard to duplicate. Although software is great to learn/teach astronomy, to help us plan observation projects and interpret their results, and even to guide our telescopes, time-lapse animations are in my opinion second best to reality. Besides fulfilling our own never-ending quest for the beautiful and  the different, animations are also great to show to beginners, as they usually do "accelerate" their interest in astronomy. In short, as you already may have guessed, I do like to produce animations and to take a look at those made by others.

Fortunately, I am just one of the many amateurs that have so far attempted and did managed to produce astronomical time-lapse animations. Up to now I have been able to record the motion of comets and asteroids, partial rotations of planets, the dance of Galilean satellites, both solar and lunar eclipses, and close-up views of the myriad shadows during sunrise over a moonscape. As expected from human nature, a few successes don't stop one's initial motivations, they just make us want to do more and do it better. For instance, I am already dreaming about capturing full rotations of Jupiter and Mars, and to grab tricolor movies of eclipses, just to mention a few ideas.

I must confess that I do have two more ambitious projects. The first one is in fact feasible. It would also have the merit of "accelerating" amateur contacts around the world. Specifically, why not try to obtain a 3-D animation of a near-Earth object? Amateurs have already demonstrated that parallax experiments work fine with single frames. Perhaps someone living a few thousand kilometers further North or South from me will be interested in the idea. The second idea is really a dream, since it would require long-term collaboration protocols. Is anyone interested in starting a "million-year" project in order to capture galactic rotations? Well, I have already started gathering a few single frames of some interesting targets...


LUNATION

image (264KB)         small animation (133KB)        large animation (463KB)

As you can imagine, this time-lapse animation took almost a month to complete. I was quite lucky with the weather, since only a few days were skipped due to rain or completely overcast skies. Each frame represents a mosaic of images obtained with a grayscale QuickCam at the prime focus of a 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Phase and shadow progression, latitude and longitude libration effect as well as variation in the Moon's apparent diameter are evident. For details see the "QuickCam Astrophotography" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


LUNAR sunrise

animation (109KB)


Partial SOLAR ECLIPSES

colourized image (53KB)        grayscale image (39KB)        animation (365KB)

This time-lapse animation of the partial solar eclipse that took place in October 12, 1996 was obtained with a ST-6 CCD camera equipped with a 500mm tele-objective + solar filter, piggy-back mounted onto a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. The camera's large CCD allowed for the whole solar disk to be captured. The frames used to prepare this animation were broadcast live in the Internet. In fact, at the time I was participating in an Astronomy On-line trans-European project for the observation of that eclipse. From the comparison of images simultaneously obtained/broadcast from Oeiras and Copenhagen, it was possible to demonstrate a parallax effect, afterwards interpreted by students in a number of specific exercises. For more details see the "SITE and EQUIPMENT" section of this page

 

PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE (99/08/11)

large mosaic (142KB)        small mosaic (70KB)

large animation (441KB)        large 3D-animation (344KB)

This time-lapse animation of the partial solar eclipse that took place in August 11, 1999 was obtained with the same setup used above. The frames used to produce the mosaics and animations were obtained exactly at a 5 min interval, starting at 8:44 UT and ending at 11:24 UT. This is just a small selection of the complete image series, which was obtained at a 1 min time-lapse. I hope you notice that, as the animation recycles, there is a small shift between the sunspot's position at the beginning and end of the eclipse (the Sun's rotation is already discernible in a few hours period). I also hope that you can "imagine" the remaining of the lunar disk that doesn't cover the Sun, particularly in the 3D animation. For more details on how to prepare such "time-lapse parallax" 3D-animations see the "SUPER-RESOLUTION" section of this page


Total LUNAR ECLIPSE

colourized image (106KB)        grayscale image (86KB)        animation (349KB)

This time-lapse animation of the total lunar eclipse that took place in September 26, 1996 was obtained with a ST-6 CCD camera equipped with a 500mm tele-objective, piggy-back mounted onto a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. The camera's large CCD allowed for the whole lunar disk to be captured. During the totality phase, irregularities of the Earth's shadow can be seen running over the lunar disk. For more details see the "SITE and EQUIPMENT" section of this page


Partial rotation of MARS

animation 99/05/10 - Y/M/D (38KB)

Three images obtained during an observation session with favorable seeing conditions, May 10, 1999, were used to build this short time-lapse animations depicting partial rotations of planet Mars. Images were obtained with a ST-5C CCD camera and a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For more details, see the "Planetary DATA", "SUPER-RESOLUTION" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


"Dance" of GALILEAN SATELLITES

96/09/09 - Y/M/D

image (36KB)         animation   (107KB)

This low-magnification time-lapse animation depicting the motion of the four Galilean moons and a partial rotation of planet Jupiter was obtained with a ST-6 CCD camera and a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For more details, see the "Observation of Planet JUPITER", "SUPER-RESOLUTION" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


Partial rotations of JUPITER

98/09/13 (Y/M/D)

image (95KB)         animation (329KB)

 

98/12/21 (Y/M/D)

image (50KB)         animation   (102KB)

These two time-lapse animations depicting partial rotations of planet Jupiter were obtained with a ST-5C CCD camera and a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For more details, see the "Observation of Planet JUPITER", "SUPER-RESOLUTION" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


JUPITER - cloud dynamics

image (31KB)         animation (25KB)

 

image (31KB)         animation (25KB)

 

image (42KB)         animation (63KB)

 

image (41KB)         animation (66KB)

 

image (36KB)         animation (54KB)

These five time-lapse animations depicting cloud dynamics on planet Jupiter were obtained with a ST-5C CCD camera and a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For more details, see the "Observation of Planet JUPITER", "SUPER-RESOLUTION" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


SATURN - occultation by the Moon

button_saturn_occultation.jpg (7276 bytes)

image (15KB)         animation (31KB)


SATURN - before, during and after opposition

image (26KB)         animation (98KB)

Time-lapse animation of planet Saturn before, during and after opposition (from September 8, 1998 to February 5 1999). Variations on disk and ring apparent diameters, ring tilt, disk shadow over the rings and ring shadow over the disk are observed. All images were obtained with a ST-5C CCD camera and a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For more details, see the "Planetary DATA", "SUPER-RESOLUTION" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


JUPITER - real time

animation (113KB)

This real-time animation of planet Jupiter shows atmospheric turbulence in a "better-than-average" observation session. It was obtained with a grayscale QuickCam at the prime focus of a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For details see the "QuickCam Astrophotography" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


IN- and OUT-OF-FOCUS star

                                       

animation (17KB)                         animation (100KB)

These real-time animations of an in- and out-of-focus star demonstrate atmospheric turbulence. They were obtained with a grayscale QuickCam at the prime focus of a 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. For details see the "QuickCam Astrophotography" and "SITE and EQUIPMENT" sections of this page


Comet HALE-BOPP

97/04/11 (Y/M/D)         animation (237KB)

 

97/04/10 (Y/M/D)         animation (214KB)

These two time-lapse animations, obtained on April 11 (above) and 10 (below), 1997, show the apparent motion of the sector of the celestial sphere where comet Hale-Bopp was located. They were obtained from my "roof-top" observatory with a fixed ST-6 CCD camera equipped with a 28mm wide-angle photographic objective plus a 0.42x super-wide converter. This setup provides a field-of-view of more than 40 degrees. In the night when the second animation was grabbed, the camera was operated at low resolution mode and the weather was quite unfavorable, with numerous rapid-moving clouds and poor sky transparency. Nevertheless, the comet's nuclear condensation is obvious. For details see the "SITE and EQUIPMENT" section of this page


North CELESTIAL POLE

animation (331KB)

 

animation (360KB)

These two time-lapse animations, obtained on April 11-12, 1997, show the apparent motion of the celestial sphere near the North celestial pole. They were obtained from my "roof-top" observatory with a fixed ST-6 CCD camera equipped with a 28mm wide-angle photographic objective plus a 0.42x super-wide converter. This setup provides a field-of-view of more than 40 degrees. In the second animation, frames were processed in order to emulate the accumulation of light in a photographic emulsion, thus originating star-trails centered near Polaris. For details see the "SITE and EQUIPMENT" section of this page


All Images and Texts on these pages are Copyrighted.

It is strictly forbidden to use them (namely for inclusion in other web pages) without the written authorization of the author

© A.Cidadão (1999)


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