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Stalking the Wily Analemma
avi33 writes "Wired has an article on the short list of photographers seeking to capture a shot of the analemma - the sun's figure-eight-shaped declination in the sky over the course of a year. Only a handful of people are known to have done this, and of course the obstacles are many: maintaining the equipment and its positioning, the finicky nature of film, the weather, and the photographer's persistence. Is it just me, or is this crying out for digital automation? Mount a cam to a hardpoint, have it snap a shot every x hours, and overlay them? Why I bet some of you could do this with a perl script in an afternoon. There's a shortage of photos from outside the northern hemisphere, so get busy."
Did the submitter read what he wrote? It needs to be over a year. And the people doing it on film would not consider doing it with a digital and software to be an achievement. Kinda takes all the challenge out of it.
Notice how two of those photos had the foreground added in with Photoshop? That's really lame. The last picture says that the foreground was added as the last exposure was taken, that's a much cooler way of doing it.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Why bother? Someone will just photoshop it anyway. (BTW - the pics are really cool, but, they too, look photoshopped.)
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
The whole point of an analemma is to do it on 1 piece of film - no fair taking multiple shots and compositing.
Sure, taking the picture itself can easily be automated.
But fixing a camera to a location so that it will not move DAMMIT (relative to the earth, that is), so that it won't get covered in snow/leaves/pigeondoo/..., so that the film won't be ruined by being out in the elements for a year, being in a location where you can reasonably count on having clear skies enough of the time to get the shots (a month of clouds will really screw you up), being able to judge the exposure needed for the sun shots without overexposing the film, then getting the final exposure (to get the background) right....
That takes a lot of skill that you are not going to be easily able to compress into a Perl script.
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Your computer can also re-produce Beethoven's 9th, "perfectly", as many times as you want.
That is not the same an orchestra performing it.
Some things are just cooler in analong.
Did anyone else read that as "analenema"?
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
I'd never thought about doing this. Several times I've considered making a short movie of either the clouds rolling past my house, or the stars over the course of an evening, or if the camera is good enough, the norther lights. Might be time to pick up a webcam and do some of these projects. In fact, it would be pretty easy to do all but two with the same camera. (The nothern lights are in the north (duh) and the sun here is always in the south).
The only problem I forsee is if I mount the camera outside, I'm going to have to deal with the weather (I'm in the Candian prairies and we can have -40C and +40C in the course of four or five months). If its inside, I'm going to have to deal with my wife asking why there is a webcam in the living room.
There was an eclipse in 1978, I think. Did your photo happen to get part of that as well? Come to think of it, that would make an interesting analemma where you plan for a solar eclipse (even a partial one) to be part of it.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
As the editor of Sky & Telescope magazine during 1978-79...
I can't believe this has been modded up.
Exhibit 1: Slashdot user name "schoolsucks" and is proud of his new PS2, yet claims to have been an editor for a major scientific publication 25 years ago.
Exhibit 2: Does this look like the work of an editor for a major publication?
Exhibit 3: -1, Troll
OTOH, I almost thought it was cool enough to put him on my Friends list, so he had me going for a while, too...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
YHBT. HAND.
No, I did not take a picture during the eclipse. I was having equipment problems.
are
here
Get in quick!
*meep*
Someone from Australia should do this. Come on, it doesn't get that cloudy that often in many places there right?
And can you imagine how cool it would be to have an analemma with Uluru in the foreground?
Moo.
Ew. I'm a victim of misreading that word.
"Derp de derp."
Additionally, the sun appears as nothing but a white dot. Any argument for "quality" makes no sense as the sun's just going to be white white white #FFFFFF anyway.
Photos.
Of course, you wouldn't want to take repeated photographs of the sun with a digital camera, because you'll invariably burn the CCD out pretty quickly.
Many TV stations have "towercams" and they routinely get sunrises and sunsets for the weather.
If any stations bothered to aim in the same direction every day at the same time, and keep the tapes, the raw data exists for an animation loop.
Superimposing the stills and adjusting the exposure will give you the photograph.
Sure, it's not as challenging, but it's still a sight to behold.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The "figure eight" analemma has a single point where the "loops" appear to cross over, close to the middle. Does the distance from the geometric center of that crossover point indicate something like latitude? Are the two loops the same size when seen from the Equator, and a single ellipse when seen from a Pole?
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make install -not war
Tubgirl allusion
If you live in a place where they adjust the clocks twice a year (to better fit people's schedules with daylight), then be sure to IGNORE those adjustments when writing your automated snapshoots! Otherwise you'll be taking pictures an hour before (or after) the sun gets to the part of the sky you're shooting.