I went out onto the courtyard this afternoon to try and photograph sunspotsbut had no luck since there was a thin overcast layer of cirrus clouds. Damsel noticed that there was an arc around the sun so I positioned myself underneath the big saguaro out front and took this image of the phenomenon.
The halo around the sun reminds me of some of the halos around the heads in medieval art works such as “Madonna y Bambino” and other halo-worthy holy figures that we saw in The Vatican, Rome and Florence, Italy a few years ago. Click on the image to enlarge.
Great shot!
Something neat you can do if you live where it’s DARK is to point your camera due South, at an elevation of about 30~45*. Take a long exposure, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see a line of white “dots” that are in fixed position, with the stars blurred.
What are they?
Geosynchronous satellites!
I did it many years ago while camping in the desert, but have long since lost the prints and negatives.
That sounds like something we can try. How long an exposure and what camera settings did you use? At our latitude, 34° above the horizon should work pretty well for geosyncs.
I had the lens wide open, and used several different shutter times.
You’ll have to experiment a bit, but I’d start with 5 and 10 minutes.
If the satellites aren’t eclipsed, they should stand out pretty brightly.
Unfortunately, my little electronic cameras have a maximum shutter speed of 15 seconds and an aperture of 2.8 in manual mode. I’ll check if Damsel’s fancy EOS Rebel can do it any longer.
UPDATE: I checked her camera and it has the BULB function that allows the user to hold down the shutter button and release after the desired period of time. The drawback to that is I would have to hold the button down for five or ten minutes.
You should be able to buy a “Remote Release” for it, what used to be called a “Cable Release”.
Like one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=cable+release+canon+rebel&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=7278709568&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4152167728658403202&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7sgnr0g16u_b