I had great hopes for the PANSTARRS comet earlier this year, but it didn’t pan out. Then there was C/2020 F8 Swan, and it fizzled out too. When I heard that NEOWISE was discovered in March and they thought it would be visible to the naked-eye, I was skeptical. And then at the begining of […]
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The Black Magic Design RX580 External GPU is a relatively inexpensive way to accelerate graphics processing on USB-C Macs. Uses include rendering time-lapse video, video editing, and faster gaming. It’s powerful and quiet, but consumes a lot (350W) of electrical power. It also acts as a hub with 4 USB 3 jacks, an HDMI 2 […]
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Was that a top secret military aircraft, or a classified satellite or a meteor burning through the atmosphere in your time-lapse? We show you how to tell the difference. Satellite database: https://www.heavens-above.com/ Aircraft database: https://flightaware.com/ Report a meteor: https://www.amsmeteors.org
Read MoreThe May 26 pass of Space X’s Starlink satellite train was super spectacular especially through binoculars. It even sparked thousands of UFO reports. I thought I had missed capturing it on my all-sky camera until I realized that the fierce winds of late had rotated the camera 90 degrees. Once I figured that out , […]
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Skylapser’s time-lapse video of the eta Aquanids meteor shower was featured on the Mother Nature News site, on May 6, 2019. You can read the article here: Did you miss the Eta Aquarid meteor shower? Problem solved
Read MoreWe finally got the replacement Hygrometer for the Cielito Azul Observatory’s weather station. The station had been giving an erroneous humidity reading, that also affected the dew point temperature reading. Thanks to Ed at Ambient weather for sending the part for our Ambient Weather ws-2902 weather station. The station’s data (with the now correct humidity […]
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Skylapser is proud to be featured on both the American Meteor Society’s and the International Meteor Organization’s Websites this week. The photo of a large fireball over New Mexico was captured by Skylapser’s Cielito Azul Observatory’s all-sky time-lapse camera at 3:55AM MST on Jan. 31, 2019.The photo is featured on the sites for the Meteor […]
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Our Friends at B&H photo have a great series of articles on helping you get started doing basic astrophotography. Check out the series by Todd Vorenkamp on the B&H exploration blog: How to Do Basic Backyard Astrophotography
Read MoreI’ve been neglecting the Skylapser site for far too long. It is time for a fresh start. Since my last post in 2015, I have moved to the desert near Taos, New Mexico USA. I am fortunate enough to have moved to a remote location with world-class night skies, and I am in the process […]
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In this Skylapser video, we show you how to calculate the Field of View (FOV) for any lens on any camera. For shooting panoramic or giga-pixel photos, it’s necessary to know both the horizontal and the vertical FOV for the particular lens that you are using. Most sites only show you the Diagonal FOV for […]
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