Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Observations on Art 2.29

For my handful of stargazing friends out there, or the one or two, not including my brother and the astrological version. Whatever, enjoy. The description is fascinating and I only posted about half of it so be sure to follow the link. Perfect for Leap Day ...


Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

"What you see is real, but you can't see it this way with the naked eye. It is the result of thousands of 20-30 second exposures, edited together to produce the time lapse. This allows you to see the Milky Way, Aurora and other Phenomena, in a way you wouldn't normally see them.

In the opening "Dakotalapse" title shot, you see bands of red and green moving across the sky. After asking several Astronomers, they are possible noctilucent clouds, airglow or faint Aurora. I never got a definite answer to what it is. You can also see the red and green bands in other shots.

At :53 and 2:17 seconds into the video you see a Meteor with a Persistent Train. Which is ionizing gases, which lasted over a half hour in the cameras frame. Phil Plait wrote an article about the phenomena here (Discover). There is a second Meteor with a much shorter persistent train at 2:51 in the video. This one wasn't backlit by the moon like the first, and moves out of the frame quickly. The Aurora were shot in central South Dakota in September 2011 and near Madison, Wisconsin on October 25, 2011."