1100 Miles in Orbit: Behind the Scenes

"1100 Miles in Orbit" is an image that prompts emotion whenever I look at it, especially on a large 24" x 36" aluminum print!  From April 30 until May 20, 2016, you can see this print among others in my exhibit "By Land, Sea, and Space" at The Better Bean Coffee Co. in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. It's an image in which I take particular pride, and I felt "1100 Miles in Orbit" deserved a full background story on how it came to be.

"1100 Miles in Orbit," Middleboro, Massachusetts

The beginning of the story is simple.  I had been exploring the possibilities of photographing the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the night sky.  It's a beautiful sight, if you know when and where to look for it.  Thankfully NASA provides a valuable resource that can tell you when the ISS will visible from your location (https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/).  The ISS can appear as bright as or even brighter than Venus.  You don't need a telescope or binoculars to view it.  It resembles a plane at night, except there are no flashing lights, and it rushes by fairly quickly.  If you take a single photograph of it, say around 20 seconds, it looks like a meteor.  At longer exposures, you can tell you're looking at something unique among the stars.  The ISS is only visible near sunrise and sunset, because what you're seeing is the reflection of sunlight bouncing off the station.

On Sunday, April 3, 2016, the ISS was expected to become visible in the northwest at 8:41pm in southeastern Massachusetts for about five minutes, moving toward the northeast and not too far from the horizon.  I chose Pocksha Pond in Middleboro, Massachusetts as my location. There's a narrow road, Long Point Road, that divides Pocksha Pond (to the north) and Great Quittacas Pond (to the south).  Several large blocks of stone descend from the roadway into the water on the northern side; I set up my tripod and camera gear on a stone just a few inches above the water surface.  It was a cold night (around 35 degrees F) and somewhat windy, but not enough to affect the stillness of the camera shots.  I took some test shots using a Canon 6D and a 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 aperture.  I decided upon a 200 ISO setting and a 25-second exposure.  Once I programmed an intervalometer to take 25-second shots with a 1-second interval between them, all I had to do was sit and watch.  You might ask why I didn't just take a 5-minute exposure; the two reasons are increased image noise and an overexposed shot.

The star indicates my location (courtesy of Google Maps)

The ISS appeared right on schedule.  For five minutes, I was able to simply take in the scene and be amazed.  Usually with photography, I'm not fully able to appreciate the scenery until I process the images later, because it's a reactive process of adapting the camera to the environment.  But for these moments in time, I could actually feel the experience.  This beacon of light sailed across the night sky, gradually dipping toward the horizon.  I asked myself questions... What were the astronauts doing during that time?   How lucky are we to have this space technology?  How many other people are looking up at this sight right now?  While taking all of it in, I felt like a young child again, mesmerized with wonder.

Once the ISS disappeared, I packed up all of my gear and made the short drive back home to my desktop computer. When I pulled up the raw images, I knew I had captured something truly great. The post-processing involved four steps: 1) using Adobe Lightroom to make corrections for contrast, lens aberrations, etc. in all eleven images; 2) using Startrails to "stack" the eleven images of the ISS into one shot; 3) using Adobe Photoshop Elements to process the stacked image [mainly to clean up the image due to the unsightly light trails of a lone aircraft]; and 4) using Google Nik to create a gritty, painting-like look. Here are some visual examples from each step of my process:

A single frame; note the edges need to be cropped due to lens corrections;
also you can see below the ISS trail there is an aircraft's trail

Stacked images, unedited

Cropped, colors adjusted, plane's trails removed

I could have stopped with the last image above.  It's a very clean photograph.  But I wanted to add a gritty, painting filter with some subtle adjustments using Google Nik.  The final result is what you see at the beginning of this post and what hangs on the wall in my favorite coffee shop!

In this photograph, I believe there are a few points upon which you can focus, all of which add to its unique beauty (in my interpretation):  The building and surrounding trees are part of the Island Terrace Nursing Home.  The nursing home creates some light glow in the sky, but it also shines some distinct lights upon the water surface. The trees ground you to the earth in the photograph.  Several wispy clouds along the horizon add some movement; they're sort of dream-like.  You can see star trails in the night sky that draw your eyes to Polaris, the North Star, around which all of the stars appear to revolve.  And of course the International Space Station's light trail is the central theme. There are small gaps in the light trail of the ISS, due to the one-second gaps between each 25-second shot; I'm okay with those gaps because they show moments of silence from the camera perspective. Finally, there's the added gritty filter - my own personal artistic mark.

The title "1100 Miles in Orbit" references the distance that the Space Station traveled in its orbit around the earth during the time that it was visible.  It is a fast moving technological marvel that won't be around forever.  Russia, the United States, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency all have collaborative stakes in the International Space Station.  We're guaranteed to see the ISS in the night skies until at least 2020.  Beyond that, its expectancy is unknown.  For now though, we should appreciate it -- scientifically and visually!

From Gooseberry Island: A Galaxy and Two Satellites

The night sky and dawn of Monday, March 7, 2016 were the bearers of four gifts for anyone gazing up in southeastern Massachusetts.  The Milky Way's galactic core was visible after 3:00 a.m., in its infancy for prime viewing in the northern hemisphere (from March to October).  The International Space Station (ISS) zoomed across the horizon at 4:02 a.m.  Lastly, the crescent moon and Venus rose above the horizon at about 5:10 a.m.  Crystal clear skies made it possible to see all of this.

Gooseberry Island, courtesy of Google Maps on 3/13/2016

My destination to photograph all of these gorgeous sights was Gooseberry Island in Westport, Massachusetts.  Gooseberry Island is part of the Horseneck Beach State Reservation, and it also is the southernmost point of Massachusett's mainland.  It offers less light pollution toward the south, making it an ideal spot to gaze at the Milky Way.

A small causeway allows one to drive (or walk) from the town of Westport onto the island.  The island itself has an intriguing history.  It is a park now, but it used to be populated with town residents and once was the site of lookout towers during World War II.  The houses are long gone, but the two towers, now graffiti-laced, remain in the southern section of the island.

Armed with my newly purchased Canon 6D camera and a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens, I was excited to figuratively christen my photography equipment by capturing shots of these four astronomical gifts.  I was a little late to the party, however; I hoped to photograph the ISS as it crossed in front of the Milky Way's center but was delayed by a couple of minutes.  Thankfully, on the southeastern shoreline, I still framed the station in its last stretch at the horizon's edge.  Some light pollution emanates from the islands southeast but not enough to drown out the Milky Way. Generally speaking, the ISS is visible on various days before sunrise.  It looks like a very fast-moving plane, except without the blinking lights.  NASA provides a helpful online resource with specific times and locations when and where one can see the ISS from Earth, at Spot the Station.

4:05 a.m.: ISS near the Horizon, and the Milky Way's core

A short walk from the shore toward the western side of the island are the two World War II era towers.  It was from there that I focused my efforts on the Milky Way with the taller tower in the foreground of the photograph.  I was pleased to get two impressive shots -- the first with the tower and coastal brush completely in the dark, and the second featuring some light painting I created by walking around the tower with a flashlight.

4:37 a.m.: The tall WWII tower & the Milky Way

4:54 a.m.: Light painting around the tower

You can see in the two images above that dawn was approaching.  I walked back to the eastern shoreline to watch the skies brighten with its colorful saturated glow of orange, magenta, and blue. On schedule, as the software program Stellarium predicted (a useful tool), the crescent moon and Venus rose above the horizon, well before the sun.  As I only had the Rokinon wide-angle lens, it was necessary to utilize a lot of cropping later to bring the moon and our closest planetary neighbor into clear focus for a photograph.

5:26 a.m.: The crescent moon and Venus rise before dawn

This was a fantastic adventure for this photographer, and it was a convenient 45-minute drive south from where I live.  I was the only person standing on Gooseberry Island for those two hours.  It was quiet, brilliant, mesmerizing, and peaceful all at once.  It was perfect.  And so I once again wish to thank the night sky, the dawn, and a marvel of space technology in orbit, on that early morning of March 7, 2016.  

Web Site Launched!

I've finally launched a full-fledged web site for all of my photography!

More information to come soon, but the link to the site is: http://www.michaelgoodhartphotography.com.

At the site are image galleries, ordering information for prints, and an artist biography.

Check it out!

The Perseids and Cape Cod

Every August in the northern hemisphere, a brilliant display of meteor showers lights up the night skies.  The Perseid meteor shower is the celebrity of the month, appearing as "shooting stars" from the Perseus constellation in the northeast.  Actually what we see is the debris of a comet that last passed nearby in 1992, and the Earth orbits through that debris to clash with the comet dust. August 2015 featured one of the best views in years as the waning crescent moon reflected almost no light that otherwise would have ruined the Perseids' visibility.

I scheduled the Perseids in my calendar months in advance and as the peak days approached, the weather looked promising for the best night from August 12th into the 13th.  Though I originally planned to go to some farmland just west of Myles Standish State Forest for the view, I made a spontaneous decision to travel to Cape Cod where one can find the lowest amounts of light pollution in southeastern Massachusetts.  Though I wished I had rented the Canon 6D that I've used during my Milky Way adventures, I had to make do with my Canon Rebel T3 this time around.  I attached a Canon 24mm f/2.8 lens and brought with me a tripod and an intervalometer.

I initially drove to Race Point Beach at Cape Cod National Seashore near Provincetown, the furthest point north on the cape.  It was about 1 a.m., and as I set up my equipment, a park ranger shined a bright flashlight in my direction and informed me the park closed at midnight and I'd have to leave.  I admittedly saw the signs entering the park saying it closed at midnight, but I'm an occasional rule-breaker if it's going to result in better photographs.  They actually enforce their policies on the cape!  That saddens me though -- so few people get near-pristine views of the dark sky, and our national parks provide some of the best of those views.  There may be a good reason to close the park at night (perhaps it's to give natural wildlife a break from humanity), or it may be a funding shortfall.  If it's the former logic, I respectfully bow to that decision -- if it's the latter reason, then the public deserves better!

However, I moved on and found a town beach a few miles south called Ballston Beach in Truro. Thankfully, most street lights were shut off so the skies were still pretty dark.  Within a few minutes my eyes adjusted, and I could make out the vague outline of the Milky Way -- a positive sign that it'd be dark enough to see almost all of the meteor showers in the night sky.  Before I could even set up my gear, a bright meteor flashed directly in front of me.  A gasp may have escaped from my mouth at that moment.  I hurried up, and I turned on LiveView on my Canon to manually focus on a boat's light far in the distance on the ocean.  I set my intervalometer to take 14-second shots every three seconds (I chose 14 seconds as that was near the threshold where star trails would begin to form in the photograph).  Set at 1600 ISO (the best I could do with my Rebel without showing too much noise in the images) and a Tungsten white balance, I let the camera do the work while I sat down in a folding chair and appreciated the views all around me.

A brilliant meteor shoots across the sky in this frame

A close-up reveals a spectrum of color in the meteor's trail

One particular moment burned strongly into my memory, when a meteor appeared ahead and seemed so bright that the entire sky flashed, and the trail from the meteor remained for several seconds -- that felt like an eternity of awe!  Beyond that moment, I repeatedly shifted from feeling anticipation to experiencing amazement.  I could see one or two meteors every minute, and sometimes a flurry of them would strike in one area of the skies in a short time.  I only wished that someone could have been there with me!

216 shots stacked: Star trails, meteor showers, boats, and planes

About 220 shots later, I stopped the intervalometer and took a few shots toward the west where a couple of beach homes stood with absolutely no lights on.  The meteors seemed to appear even more frequently in that direction.  I continued to experiment with various shots, but around 3:45 a.m., I decided I was done for the night.  I drove back to the motel I had booked for a cheap $74 and took a gander at the images until the pre-dawn light appeared.

Facing west toward the beach homes

At about 5:15 a.m., I headed out to Nauset Light Beach in Eastham, just a quick drive about two miles away, so that I could witness the sun rise.  The beach didn't open until 6 a.m. (again, it's part of the national seashore so it's closed at night), but a dozen people were already there.  We weren't going to be stopped from hitting the beach to get the best of the sunrise -- the dreamers revolt!  Actually, there weren't any park rangers in sight, so I suppose it doesn't quite count as a rebellion.

Before the sunrise, in pastel

After the sunrise, in the golden hour

I hadn't realized that seals frequently swim in the shallow waters in that area.  They looked like they were enjoying themselves out there.  Thousands of small pebbles and rocks smoothed out over time dotted the shore.  Ocean waves rolled, then pounded the beach, foamed up, and retreated back.  A long line of clouds hovered just about the horizon; they looked like an oncoming ocean wave in the sky.  The dawn featured the softest pastel colors.  A couple of solidly placed rocks caught the brunt of the waves, and as the sun rose behind them, the light did some intriguing things as waves' droplets reached high up in the sky.  It was a wonderful end to the night, start of the day, and conclusion to this adventure.

Ocean waves crash upon two rocks; droplets scatter high above

A nostalgic perspective of a beautiful morning

My Milky Way Expedition

I recently completed my first successful 'exploration' of photographing the Milky Way on the night of June 13, 2015 at Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine.  It was also my inauguration to simply witnessing the Milky Way's presence.  This had been a personal goal of mine for several months, requiring significant planning.

A little after 11pm on that Saturday night after driving about an hour to Acadia, I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to Sand Beach, and I took my equipment and various items out of my car.  I had rented from BorrowLenses a Canon 6D, a Rokinon 14mm f2.8 lens, and an intervalometer. Some bug spray, a headlamp, mace (for personal protection), my MeFOTO Roadtrip tripod, and hand-warmers were part of my "toolkit" (the hand-warmers were for wrapping around the lens rubber to prevent condensation from forming on the lens).  I also needed a caffeine pill to stay awake, considering I'd be out there until 3am!  Through prior research using applications such as Stellarium and Planit! Pro for Photographers, I already knew exactly when and where the Milky Way would be visible, as well as when the moon (nearly a new moon) would be below the horizon.

I walked down to Sand Beach, an ideal Milky Way viewing location, as it's set between rocky landscapes that block out most of the light pollution from nearby Bar Harbor.  It only took about a minute for my eyes to adjust enough in the dark to see it: a vague outline of what appeared to be a vast cloud extending from the southern horizon to the northern horizon.  It was a stunning sight. You can't really prepare yourself for its beauty if you've never seen it before.  I took a few moments to pause and appreciate what I was seeing up in those skies.  How sad it is that we waste so much electricity on our artificial lights and shun the darkness, blocking out most of the night sky!  

One of my initial shots -- some clouds interfered a bit

I set up my equipment and proceeded with some test shots after manually focusing the lens on a distant bright star.  The above photograph was one of my initial prized images appearing on the camera's image review screen -- with a full frame DSLR camera, you can capture the detail and colors far better than with the naked eye.  I could see that some clouds were blocking some of the Milky Way, so I waited them out for a few minutes -- the forecast called for mostly clear skies, a necessity for viewing purposes.  Of course, to my unaided eyes, that gorgeous sight in the sky looked much more like the processed image below - faint but beautiful.

To the naked eye, the Milky Way looked much like this

For the majority of my shots, I ended up using the following camera settings: ISO 2500, 25 second exposure, f/2.8.  White balance didn't matter since I was saving to RAW files that I could easily adjust in post processing.  The manual-focus wide-angle Rokinon lens captured a broad view of the skies. 

Whenever I needed to see what I was actually doing with my equipment, I used the red LED light on my headlamp.  Red light doesn't negatively impact our night vision as much as other light.  That's important because it takes several minutes for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, and any introduced light will biologically "reset" your eyesight to normal; thus, you have to wait a while once again to see the Milky Way with your own eyes.  

The red LED light from my headlamp added interesting effects in this shot

I didn't intend on spending all of my time at Sand Beach, as I'd heard Little Hunters Beach was also a great photographer's spot.  It is located further southwest just past Otter's Cove.  It was at Little Hunters Beach that I spent the majority of my time.  It seemed as though the skies were even darker there.  I decided to utilize the intervalometer to automate the process of photographing the night sky, to create a time lapse video.  While that was happening, it gave me time to see what my Canon T3 and 24mm lens could do.  I didn't expect much as it's not a full-frame DSLR and isn't built for night photography -- you have to utilize high ISO settings to photograph the Milky Way, which equates to a lot of noise in the resulting images.  My T3 surprisingly did okay, although nothing of the quality I'd want for making a print.

My Canon T3 and 24mm lens did surprisingly okay (though quite poor compared to the 6D) 

The 6D, on the other hand, gave me one of its best views in detail and color of the Milky Way on Little Hunters Beach, below.

I should have kept better track of the time -- a lesson learned for the next time I do a time lapse of the Milky Way.  I stopped the intervalometer far, far too soon; with 75 photographs taken, I was able to produce a brief three-second clip of the starry skies rotating across the horizon (although technically, it is the Earth that's rotating).  That you can see on YouTube in HD (see below) -- it'll flash by quickly, though!  Night sky time lapses are mesmerizing -- to see all of those stars in motion, you can easily visualize the concept that we exist on this tiny, fragile planet, spinning within an epic universe.

  

After Little Hunters Beach, I ventured to my final destination of the night -- atop Cadillac Mountain.  As I was winding my way to the top of the mountain in my Prius, I knew exactly what kind of moment I wanted to capture.  In the last bend in the road, there's a spot where you can pull over and look south toward Northeast Harbor.  The light pollution was heavier in that direction, but I could still clearly see in the skies our home galaxy's core.  I tested the view with the 6D, liked what I saw, and then set a twenty second delay on the timer.  That was plenty of time for me to hop across the large rocks toward the south and pose for the camera.  I gazed above at the Milky Way with my headlamp brightly shining up.  It was my 'selfie' of the night.  A meteor, shooting across the sky, photobombed that selfie.  I'll take it. :)

A selfie with the Milky Way, and a photobombing meteor

It was a fantastic experience -- one that I plan to do again in the future and improve upon.

I strongly encourage you to make your own journey to a locale dark enough to witness that gorgeous Milky Way in the night sky.  You'll need to get many miles away from the cities and suburbia (which may be difficult to do) to escape the light pollution that sadly makes the Milky Way invisible to over two-thirds of the US population and half of the world, according to a 2001 study.  To see the night skies in all of its vast beauty is to experience something beyond our daily modern lives of technology.  Something that may connect you to a larger, enlightening world.

The Snow Moon and Jupiter

On Tuesday (February 3, 2015), the Snow Moon (full moon in February) appeared to be best buds with Jupiter throughout the entire night.  They were within about 4.5 degrees of each other.  What does that mean?  If you hold your fist out at arm's length, 4.5 degrees would be a little less than half of your clenched fist.

New England has been experiencing a lot of snow and clouds in the last couple weeks, so we were lucky to have clear skies Tuesday night.  Getting photographs of the moon and Jupiter wasn't too difficult.  I was able to just step outside with a tripod and take some shots using a 75-300mm zoom lens and an 18-55 zoom lens.  The only two challenges were getting the moon into focus and getting the exposure correct.  You have to manually focus onto the moon, which requires a bit of finesse.  For the exposure, a full moon is so bright that the shot needs to be very quick, while Jupiter needs a longer exposure to gather enough light from the planet to be visible in the photograph.

I came up with three resulting images that I liked.  First, a wide angle view with trees in the foreground so that it'd be more interesting and also obvious on what you're looking at -- I intentionally over-exposed the shot for the moon as I really liked the star-like effect the moon gave off that way, and it was the only way for Jupiter to be visible at such a wide angle; second, a closer shot of just Jupiter and the moon; finally, a close-up photo of the Snow Moon.

@18mm

@135mm

@300mm

Mount Auburn Cemetery in Winter

If you appreciate a beautiful garden cemetery, then you must visit Mount Auburn Cemetery along the border of Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts.  It is considered to be the first rural garden cemetery in the United States, founded in 1831, and designed to be a place to mourn but also to appreciate the natural beauty of the landscape.  It doesn't feel like a typical cemetery -- there is something otherworldly yet grounded about it.  Spanning across 170 acres of land, there is much to take in: the hills, the fauna and flora (particularly the diversity of birds and trees), the memorials, the monuments, and even the skyline views of Boston.

You could easily walk around the garden cemetery for several hours, perhaps an entire day, and still not see all that it offers.  I visited in October 2014 during the autumn revolution of colors, and in January 2015, I returned to get a new winter perspective as nearly three feet of snow covered the grounds.  It was an entirely different experience.

Story Chapel and the Administration Building

I chose to make my visit on a sunny late afternoon just three days after the blizzard Juno swept through.  During the couple hours prior to sunset, the bright light of the sun gradually shifts in color, then dramatically changes to a golden hue.  It's a perfect time to photograph.  The roads were mostly clear, and where it wasn't, the snow was fairly compacted.  The walking paths, however, were not cleared.  It meant that you simply had to appreciate the beauty of many sights from afar.  It also meant that grounds were clean and pristine, free of the salt and filth associated with plows and roads, and that amplified the gorgeousness of an untouched snow-covered landscape!

One of my favorite spots is Willow Pond, aptly named.  The willow tree (specifically, the weeping willow) is my most treasured type of tree. You would have had no idea a pond was there, as it was covered by ice and heavy snow.  The willows were in sight, however.  And as you can see here, that magical afternoon hour of sunlight made an impact on the willows' appearance.  You'd never know you were so close to a city here - it was so quiet and lovely.

At the edge of Halcyon Lake, the sharply defined, granite Mary Baker Eddy Monument is magnificent.  Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of Christian Science -- her name is associated with much in New England but especially Boston, where the Christian Science Plaza and "Mother Church" can be seen.  She was buried here at Mount Auburn Cemetery.  The design of the monument has such purpose and meaning -- which you can read more about through its hyper-linked name above.

The mausoleums at Mount Auburn Cemetery are diverse in terms of their structure and intricate designs.  The Lodge Tomb is one of my favorites (seen above).  It features this intriguing door -- yet it seems much more than a door.  The labor, love, and material spent to create it much have been great.  The shadows of the trees behind me added a layer of contrast to this scene.

The history of Mount Auburn Cemetery is lengthy and rich, and several books have been written about it.  One of them that I'd like to read is "Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery."  It seems like the perfect combination of written research and imagery.

Cherry Path in black & white

I look forward to seeing the way the spring brings about the flowers and other plant life.  Many of the walking paths bear names that refer to things we associate with flowers and fruits of spring and summer, such as cherries, lilacs, primroses, mayflowers, and tulips.  But Mount Auburn Cemetery is worth a visit in the winter, let alone any season!